July 2007
The Syrian Studies Center at St. Andrews University
Syria is a pivotal country, one that, for per-haps a decade, has balanced uneasily between two contrary impulses. On the one hand, it carries the banner of Arab national-ism against threats to the Arab world from Israel and the West; hence Syria was the only Arab country to defy world hegemony and oppose the US invasion of Iraq. On the other hand, the heir of a rich mercantile tradition, Syria yearns to rejoin the world economy and was just recently on the brink of joining the Euro Mediterranean Partnership. Syria, a complex country, with diverse traditions accumulated over centuries, remains poised between these different orientations. Which way it goes is not entirely under its own control since the “struggle for Syria” that Patrick Seale showed to be pivotal to the course of the whole Middle East in the 1950s, is now being played out again. As it was in the 1950s, the outcome will be crucial not just for Syria but also for the future of the entire region.
The Last of the Mohicans
Has any of you seen the
movie The Last of the Mohicans?
Well, if you did, then you’d know that the Mohicans—now all but extinct, by the good graces of 18th century European colonialism—were a Native American tribe, who converted to Christianity and fought on the side of the American colonists in both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. Not only was their role cynically ignored later by their colonial allies; they were also dispossessed of their land and forced to move westward, where their culture and population withered to obscurity. Had it not been for James Fennimore Cooper’s novel The Last of The Mohicans (the basis of the excellent Hollywood movie with the same name, starring Daniel Day Lewis); this entire people would quite simply have disappeared from the annals of history.
Face of the future: Chadan Naji
After receiving her medical diploma from Damascus University in 2000, Chadan Naji
completed her academic, laboratory, and clinical training in basic science and
medical sub-specialties. She started her graduate studies in 2003 and obtained
an MA in Dermatology and Venereology from Damascus University.
She now works as an instructor at the Medical College of Damascus University,
teaching clinical sessions to senior students. She is also active on the
international level, working as Program Consultant for the United Nations Fund
for Populations Affairs (UNFPA), and shines in the ield of social and charity
work. Chadan’s concern for the well-being of children cannot pass unnoticed.
Along with a team of experts, Chadan took the initiative of draft-ing the Law of
the Disabled in Syria.
She is a member of the National Team on Child-hood, through which she has
conducted a detailed study on the current situation of Syrian children,
addressing fields of insufficiency and preparing a draft for the nation-al plan
for childhood. She is a co-founder of the Syrian Organization for the Disabled
(AAMAL), and the Rainbow Institute for Better Childhood, in which she served as
vice-chairman until 2004. She founded a volunteer team in Dar Zeid Bin Hartiha
for abandoned children, where volunteers visit the children at the center on a
regular and organized basis, supervising their health, education and
well-being. BASMA is Chadan’s latest achievement, through which she supports
and helps children with cancer. Actively involved in a variety of organizations
she is a member of the Syndicate of Syrian Medical Doctors, the Federation of
Palestinian Doctors, the Syrian Computer Society, and the Syrian Dermatology
Society. She has attended over 10 international conferences, most of which
address children and childhood around the world, and participated in the
Conference on Disability in the Arab World that took place in Beirut. She co-organized the National
Conference on Childhood that took place in Aleppo in 2004, addressing critical topics
such as child sexual and physical abuse. Chadan also co-organized the Child
Abuse & Neglect Protection Symposium, which took place in Damascus in 2004, in collaboration with
ISPCAN and UNICEF. Chadan was appointed as a speaker in the first Symposium on
promoting volunteerism among school students which took place in 2005. Chadan
Naji was awarded the Donald Cohen Award for the Best Research Proposal concerning
PTSD among Abused Children Forward Magazine met with her to talk about the
‘other side’ of the Doctor—the human side of Chadan Naji.
Nabil al-Maleh: I reflect the marginalized Syrian to the rest of the world
screenplay writer,
producer, painter, designer, poet, and filmmaker, Nabil al-Maleh is truly a
three-dimensional renaissance man. He has taught directing, acting, and
screenplay writing in the United
States, and directed some of the infest classics
in the history of Syrian film. His works include—in addition to the timeless
movie, al-Fahd—twelve feature films and 80 medium-to-short ones, in
addition to 120 hours of television features and drama series. He has won over
55 international awards and published over 1,000 articles, poems, and research
papers. Nabil al-Maleh spoke to FW Magazine about the success story of one of Syria’s infest
artists.
From Hiroshima to Jamal Mansour
In the previous issue of Forward, I read an article by my dear friend Jamal Mansour, asking about «his» Hiroshima. He compared between the crisis of Japan in 1945 and the crisis of the Middle East in 1967. He then wondered why Japan, less than 50 years after the fiasco of the atomic bomb, became one of the most powerful countries in the world, while the Middle East and the Arab world in general is still being manipulated and is still trying to find a way to get rid of the Israeli threat or more recently, American influence in the region.
They Visited Damascus
Over the last 200-years a variety of political, cultural, and ‘revolutionary’ celebrities have visited Damascus. Some came for tourism, others for work. All of them, however, came across with very favorable impressions of the capital of the Umayyads. Whether it was Damascus under the Ottomans, the French, or since independence in 1946, the city has never failed to inspire, impress, and enchant its visitors. The hall of fame of those who have come to Syria is a long and impressive one, which has never been studied in a proper manner. It includes, among others, three US presidents, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Cart-er, Bill Clinton, four French presidents, Charles de Gaulle, Valerie Gescard D’Estaing, Jacques Chirac, and two Brit-ish prime ministers, Winston Churchill and Tony Blair. It also includes every Secretary General of the United Nations, from the first Trygve Lie to the current Ban Ki Moon. Forward Magazine takes a look at some of the ‘who’s who’ in the long list of Syria visitors.
A progressive interpretation of women’s issues in Islam
Islam has evolved over the
course of historic and cultural events spanning more than a millennia. It has
proven to be a dynamic and progressive faith capable of adapting without conflicting
with modernity. The concept of ‘Ijtihad,’ or reinterpretation, is central to
this flexibility in Islam. It allows for the redefinition of religious laws and
practices in contemporary terms. Now more than ever, the Muslim world needs a
modern Islamic reinterpretation of women’s rights that is responsive to their
contemporary challenges and aspirations.
US-Syrian Relations: Beyond Sharm el-Sheikh, stalemate or rapprochement?
In light of international peace conferences that have taken place there, the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh appears to have earned the moniker, “The City of Peace.” But not if one looks beneath the surface. It was the September 4, 1999 Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum that supposedly committed Israel and the PLO to implement the Oslo II Accords of September 1995. They never got implemented. The negotiations over the contentious issues of Jerusalem, borders, refugees and settlements did not yield positive results.
The presidential dilemma in Turkey
When Mustafa Kamal Ataturk founded the modern republic of Turkey in 1923, and served as its president until his death fifteen years later, he had one objective: modernization. This was done through concentrated secularization of Turkey’s politics, economy, society, and cultural life. Under his guidance, elected parliaments (composed of the only legal party, chaired personally by Ataturk) passed a number of bold laws. Probably the most revolutionary were those on Turkey’s education and its legal system. He abolished all religious courts and replaced them with secular ones, doing the same with the Islamic curriculum. Islam was left out of the republican bodies and all related institutions.
‘Wedging’ Damascus from Tahran
or over a year now, scholars, analysts, and politicians in the United States, and elsewhere, have obsessed over the Syrian-Iranian ‘alliance’ and over the ways to break it. This discussion resonated throughout different European capitals, as well as in the Middle East. With palpable indicators that the US administration was entrenched in its policies of isolating both, Iran and Syria, the rhetoric of forcing a ‘wedge’ between Damascus and Iran quieted down for some time. However, as foreign and Arab emissaries proceeded to pour into Damascus, and with the warm reception Syria received at the Arab Summit in Riyadh, along with the recent meeting between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem, the ‘wedge’ argument resurfaced.