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Drew ChristiansenNovember 22, 2010

Jim Zogby is a friend. He, his wife, Eileen, and I were members of the same Christian Family Movement group. I have witnessed the marriages of their children, baptized their grandchildren and celebrated Mass for their 25th wedding anniversary. We are colleagues, too. We served together on the board of the American Committee on Jerusalem and took counsel together on supporting Christians in the Middle East, ending conflict in the region and defending the human rights of Palestinians—for which we both have paid a price.

Jim and I have worked for justice with different and overlapping communities, have faced common difficulties and bear the psychic scars inflicted by the organized defenders of injustice. The high points of his life story are fairly well known in Catholic Washington and among political activists, but until I read his new book, Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us and Why It Matters (Palgrave Macmillan), I had not realized how much he and his fellow Arab-Americans have endured from their fellow Americans.

Arab Voices presents an overview of Arab public opinion intended to correct Americans’ stereotypes and redress our ignorance of the Arab peoples. Drawing from 14 years of polling Jim has done with his pollster brother, John, across the Middle East, the book addresses persistent myths about Arabs, such as their supposed anger and aversion to change, and it exposes the blunders and failures produced by American misperceptions and prejudices in country after country: Iraq, most of all, but Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Palestine.

Even for an experienced amateur like myself, there are surprises. For instance, only in Saudi Arabia is Islam listed as the number one source of Arab identity. Otherwise, the number one factor consists of political concerns, especially about Iraq and Palestine. Not surprisingly, the Arab language is the second-ranked factor binding people across national boundaries and cultures. For the most part, a majority of Arabs have a favorable attitude toward the American people and American freedom. (So much for the myth that “they” hate our freedom.) For me personally, however, the eye-opening passages were those in which Jim recounted his personal history to illuminate the hostility Arab-Americans meet in American society.

When I taught seminars on justice, I thought it important for the students to understand not just theories of justice or the details of particular remedies but also the history of struggles to advance racial, gender or economic justice. They needed to get a feeling for the personalities of leaders who labored and suffered to make this a more just world. Jim comes by his thirst for justice naturally. Both his mother, Saleemie, and his Aunt Lila Mandour were protesting anti-Arab prejudice in the 1920s. Jim, however, thought of himself as an American, not an Arab, but that is not how others saw him.

For some, including the right-thinking activists with whom Jim made common cause, he writes, “‘Arab’ seems to cancel out the ‘American.’” In an anti-Vietnam protest, as he rose to speak, another protester jeered, “Why are they letting the Arab talk?” Time and again, Jim, who is a gentle, quiet-spoken man, found himself set aside by putative allies—Amnesty International, the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy, the Democratic National Committee—because he was advocating justice for unpopular people. His biography puts on display the sacrifice, pain and disappointment men and women of every age must endure in the struggle for justice. If I were preparing a curriculum on justice today, I would include the chapter “Arab Americans: Bridging the Divide” as a case study in principle and courage.

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SEAN MCMANUS MR
13 years 4 months ago

Letters to the Editor


America Magazine106 West 56th Street


New York.


NY 10019-3803mk


 


Editor in Chief, Fr.Drew Christiansen, claims to,“ bear psychic scars inflicted by the organized defenders of injustice”. (“Of many things”. November 22).


It’s a pity he didn’t get some of those scars from exposing and opposing British injustice against Catholics in Northern Ireland.


   As the former Director of the Office of International Justice and Peace of the US Catholic Conference (1998-2004), he continued the abysmal record of that Office in colluding (by silence) with British torture, systematic violations of human rights and


endemic anti-Catholic discrimination in Northern Ireland.


Indeed, the Office of International Justice and Peace since the early 70’s has been in effect the “ ecclesiastical wing of the British Embassy in Washington”. It never seriously, or proportionately to its power, took on the British government. .. “Not respectable to do so, old boy, lest you be seen as sympathetic to the IRA.”


Indeed, the Office of International Justice and Peace in 1993 tried to sabotage the most effective campaign ever against anti-Catholic discrimination in Northern Ireland – the Mac Bride Principles, launched by the Irish National Caucus in November 1984 to be a code of conduct for American companies doing business in Northern Ireland. That Office conspired with “ fronts” for the British Government to host a conference in the U.S., whose purpose was to change the name of the Principles, neutralizing them and making them acceptable to the British Government. When we got wind of their machinations, we stopped them cold. Imagine the downright cheek and arrogance of that: they never lifted a finger to support the Mac Bride Principles, yet they had the effrontery to assume the right to change their name! Surely another example of the rampant clericalism and ecclesiastical hubris that have brought the Church into so much disrepute.


After almost forty years of struggling to get America to stand up for justice and peace in Northern Ireland, I can say from considerable experience and with documented evidence that the U.S. Bishops (with a few exceptions) and The Office of Justice and Peace have exhibited a shocking and shameful indifference to the oppression of Catholics in Northern Ireland. And to make it worse, they have never shown any sense of shame over that betrayal.


Something psychic may explain that betrayal, but it ain’t psychic scars.


Fr. Sean Mc Manus


President


Irish National Caucus


P.O. BOX 15128


Capitol Hill


Washington, DC 20003-0849


Tel. 202-544-0568


Fax. 202-488-7537


sean@irishnationalcaucus.org


 


 

Sues Krebs
11 years 10 months ago
Arab americans are not necessarily islamic people. I knew a christian family that had to leave an islamic country to have the freedom to practice their faith as they saw fit. My friend's family's nationality does not make her automatic islamic. And yes as far as I know they're still Catholic.

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