“THE ISLAMIC CULTURAL CENTER NEAR GROUND ZERO - NewsWithViews.com” plus 2 more |
- THE ISLAMIC CULTURAL CENTER NEAR GROUND ZERO - NewsWithViews.com
- 4 decades later, China still isn't discussing Cultural Revolution - YAHOO!
- Doctors to watch cultural sensitivities when treating Arab patients - PR Inside
| THE ISLAMIC CULTURAL CENTER NEAR GROUND ZERO - NewsWithViews.com Posted: 24 Aug 2010 09:57 PM PDT THE ISLAMIC CULTURAL CENTER NEAR GROUND ZERO
By Attorney Jonathan Emord Controversy surrounds plans to build an Islamic cultural center with a prayer room at 45 Park Place (the site of the former Burlington Coat Factory) just two blocks from the World Trade Center site. This event, like many others in our history (perhaps most notably when Nazis march in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods or Ku Klux Klan members parade about in minority neighborhoods) call upon Americans to determine, fundamentally, whether they believe in the First Amendment rights of those who hold religious and political views contrary to their own. It would indeed be ironic, a singular triumph for the totalitarians who oppose our Constitution of liberty, whether al-Qaeda, Taliban, or petty tyrants the world over, to see us provoked by dissenting views to abandon our respect for and defense of individual liberty (for the freedom of speech and religion) actuated by the same basic prejudice that motivates them. Obfuscation of facts is a tool used by those whose bias overwhelms prudent judgment. The cultural center and prayer room planned for 45 Park Place is not a mosque or house of worship for Muslims. The Center's Imam, however, is a person who has made bizarre, inflammatory statements concerning alleged United States complicity in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Imam Faisel Rauf told 60 Minutes just weeks after the September 11 attacks: "I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened but United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened." Odious as Imam Rauf's views may be to the majority of Americans, he is fully protected in his right to state them. Were we to present views critical of state dogma in Taliban controlled Afghanistan or in other countries where free speech is forbidden, we might well be incarcerated (or worse). Yet he, having the great privilege of living in a land that defends freedom of speech and press, may speak as he pleases on matters of politics and religion (and for that, whether he admits it or not, he owes a debt of gratitude to this great land).
The terrorist acts that occurred on September 11 were an assault on the very values of freedom on which our country is based. They were spawn by petty men whose hatred for free people and detestation of religious pluralism is antithetical to our most basic concepts of liberty, those ensconced in our institutions of freedom—our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our Declaration of Independence. Those petty men are dogmatic adherents of a theocratic dictatorship of their own creation, opposed not only by free people in the West but also by theocracies in power within their own region of the world. They are brutes, not unlike other petty criminals, not unlike the Mafia and not unlike the kingpins who rule international drug cartels. They are puffed up in the creative imaginations of some who would associate them with far more power and ability to effectuate their ends than they actually possess. They are a threat to Americans lives and property but a threat we can, and eventually will, destroy. Their ideas, however, shorn of the violence, are protected speech under our great Constitution of liberty. We must not make the terrible mistake of presuming American citizens who are of the Islamic faith or who hold views contrary to our own are undeserving of the full protection of our First Amendment. We were founded on the opposite premise. Early in the American Republic, Thomas Jefferson and the Jeffersonian Republicans faced the mighty horror that stems from governmental intolerance of dissent. Censored by the odious Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 that forbad Americans from criticizing President John Adams, the Federalist Congress, or even federal law (a revival of seditious libel despite a First Amendment intended to end that restraint on speech), the Jeffersonian Republicans succeeded in defeating their Federalist opponents in the Presidential election of 1801 and in restoring protection for freedom of speech. In their victory, the Republicans did not retaliate against the Federalists by silencing those who would silence them—the very danger of political control over speech. Rather, in the eloquent words of Thomas Jefferson in his first Inaugural Address, the rights of the minority are to be defended in America and errors of opinion are to be proved through open discussion:
In short, far from proving weakness, we prove our greatness, our faith in freedom, by defending the legal right of Imam Rauf to have his Park51 (formerly known as the Cardoba House) Islamic Cultural Center two blocks from ground zero. We prove that in the United States those whose religious and political views dissent from the majority are protected, so long as they do not violate the equal rights of others. Peaceful study of Islamic texts, of the Quran and of the teachings of Imam Rauf and others is the right of those who wish to so partake and is a fitting tribute to the freedom of those who bravely gave their lives for this country on September 11, 2001, before and since.
We should rededicate ourselves to the basic principles of freedom of speech and religion. We must defend the rights of those in the minority to dissent equally with those in the majority to support the orthodox view. While we may take legal action against those who plan the destruction of human life and property even when those who act profess they are doing so in the name of religion, we must respect the right of people to dissent in peaceful ways from religious faiths and political views held by the majority. Let Imam Rauf have his Islamic Cultural Center, let him hold views antithetical to the majority of Americans in ways that would not be possible were the theocracy he so admires established here, let that hypocrisy be the source of free criticism of him, and let him thereby stand as a tribute to freedom of religion and speech. © 2010 Jonathan W. Emord - All Rights Reserved Jonathan W. Emord is an attorney who practices constitutional and administrative law before the federal courts and agencies. Congressman Ron Paul calls Jonathan "a hero of the health freedom revolution" and says "all freedom-loving Americans are in [his] debt . . . for his courtroom [victories] on behalf of health freedom." He has defeated the FDA in federal court a remarkable seven times, six on First Amendment grounds, and is the author of Amazon bestsellers The Rise of Tyranny, and Global Censorship of Health Information. For more info visit Emord.com. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php | |
| 4 decades later, China still isn't discussing Cultural Revolution - YAHOO! Posted: 24 Aug 2010 12:24 PM PDT BEIJING — The schoolgirls slapped and punched their vice principal, then grabbed table legs with protruding nails and beat her unconscious. Bian Zhongyun was left slumped in a garbage cart in the Beijing high school's courtyard. She'd urinated and defecated on herself, and died with blood and spit drooling from her mouth. On that afternoon in August 1966 , Bian became an early murder victim of the Cultural Revolution, a movement that would leave millions of Chinese dead, injured or mentally broken in the decade that followed. Although 44 years have passed since the "Red August" that unleashed the floodgates of violence in the capital and across the nation, there's never been a complete public accounting in China about what happened. Bian's killers have yet to be named. "Even after all these decades, their crimes are still being covered up," said Wang Jingyao, 89, Bian's widower. Wang has kept the bloody, soiled clothes that Bian wore the day she was killed. He wants to know who killed his wife. "But it's very difficult to find out in China ," he said. Unlike South Africa or Chile , which set up truth commissions to exhume painful pasts, China remains tight-lipped. The authoritarian government in Beijing has discouraged domestic attempts at critical examination of the legacy of the Cultural Revolution. So even as analysts across the world speak of China's bright economic future, at home this August there remains a page missing from the country's past. Observers say the reason is obvious: Mao Zedong, who fanned the flames of the Cultural Revolution out of fears that the government was growing too moderate, is the historical bedrock of the Communist Party . To delve into the destruction Mao wrought could lead to a questioning of the political system itself. Chinese official histories acknowledge that the period was bloody and chaotic, but they give little detail about what happened, especially when it comes to individual murders. State museums often don't mention the event at all. The Cultural Revolution formally began in the spring of 1966 with notifications at the Politburo, but the wider bloodshed began that August after Mao, dissatisfied with the government for not acting boldly enough, urged more radical action. Red Guard units attacked those with "bad class backgrounds" with impunity, universities were shut down and millions were sent to the countryside to do manual labor. Other leaders later took the blame for the chaos, starting with the "Gang of Four," which included Mao's wife, but veneration of the "Great Helmsman" continued after he died in 1976. "The Cultural Revolution changed the life of our generation completely, and it wreaked havoc on China . It was a catastrophe," said Wang Duanyang, who as a teenager led a Red Guard group in Tianjin , a city southeast of Beijing . "I feel regret. ... I have done a lot of things that you may think ridiculous and insane, but those things were done in a particular context." Wang wrote a book that described the humiliation and beating of his school's leaders and local officials that he witnessed, and in 2007 he paid to have 1,000 copies published. In the forward he apologizes "to the people who I've hurt." He handed out the volume to friends and acquaintances, but commercial distribution wasn't an option. "According to the Chinese government, any (unauthorized) book related to the Cultural Revolution is not allowed to be published," said Wang, whose own father, an author, was denounced as a "rightist" during the movement. Why? "You should ask the Chinese government," he said. Beyond Mao's legacy, the history is sensitive because those involved in assaults on their fellow Chinese almost certainly included future leaders of business and politics. Looking over pictures of himself with fellow Red Guards in 1966 and beyond, Wang pointed to young men who grew up to be a vice minister, an influential party official in Shanghai and the director of an important state history museum. Wang Youqin, a former student at Bian's school who's written a book about the Cultural Revolution, named a prominent Chinese bank executive and a senior administrator at a Shanghai university as having knowledge about Bian's death. "They have become people with power and with money," said Wang Jingyao, Bian's husband. "The central government wants to cover up for them and protect them." The high school where Bian died was one of the best known in the country. The daughters of the general secretary of the Communist Party , Deng Xiaoping , and the head of state, Liu Shaoqi, attended the school. (The two men were named enemies of the party during the Cultural Revolution; Liu reportedly died in a jail cell, but Deng later became the country's leader.) Despite the school's visibility, there's been no official investigation of Bian's murder on Aug. 5, 1966 . A Chinese filmmaker produced a short, powerful documentary about her death in 2006, but authorities forbade showing it in China . Wang Youqin, who's a senior lecturer of Chinese language at the University of Chicago , has created a website and ongoing research project about Bian's death and the Cultural Revolution, but Chinese authorities blocked the site. "If there was a trial I would go to the court and give evidence, but there is no trial," Wang Youqin said. "They say that generation was fed by wolves' milk; they never really understood that what they did was wrong." A moment later, Wang corrected herself, saying that there are former Red Guards who are sorry for their actions, but "for some people who were Red Guards, they don't want you to expose their bloody past." During the afternoon of that Aug. 5 , Wang said, she saw students pour black ink on administrators' faces and drag them around and then "people went to the carpenter's room and got broken table legs with nails in them." At that point, Wang said, she left the scene. Bian already had been subjected to "struggle sessions" in which students kicked and beat her with wooden training rifles. They plastered her house with signs that accused her of party disloyalty and taunted that she'd "trembled all over" while getting doused with water and having her mouth stuffed with mud "just like a pig." The day before her death, more than a half-dozen students whipped Bian and another teacher with belts and buckles. One of the senior student leaders present the afternoon of Bian's murder, Liu Jin , agreed to talk with McClatchy about the experience. Liu was joined by a friend, Feng Jinglan, who was also there that day. The pair, now in their 60s, recounted the political history of the Cultural Revolution and gave a chronology of events at the school; but after an hour of talking, neither of them had described a specific act of violence. Only when pressed on the murder did the two women say that Bian and four other administrators were frog-marched around the schoolyard and beaten. Both said they were in another part of the school when it happened. So who, exactly, was responsible? "It was a group action. A lot of students beat Bian Zhongyun, maybe just hitting her on the back or slapping her," Feng said. "But her death is not the responsibility of any one individual." MORE FROM MCCLATCHY Follow China developments at McClatchy's China Rises blog Cheated on seeds and denied justice, a Chinese farmer takes his own life Expo 2010 Shanghai : A 'Better Life,' but not for dissidents Beijing's 'nail house' blocks 6 lanes of traffic Rising Chinese businessman killed on party official's orders This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php | |
| Doctors to watch cultural sensitivities when treating Arab patients - PR Inside Posted: 25 Aug 2010 04:38 AM PDT 2010-08-25 13:41:07 - Patient-doctor relationship in focus at the Abu Dhabi Medical Congress Abu Dhabi, UAE – 25 August, 2010: A review of studies published over the past four decades has confirmed that good doctor-patient communication makes a difference not only in patient satisfaction but in improving patient outcomes including emotional, physical and other important health indicators. Current models of communication skill theory available for primary care physicians have been developed predominantly in western, English speaking settings, however, doctors working in the UAE and surrounding region need to look at how these models should be adapted for the Gulf Arab context.According to Dr Deen Mirza of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the UAE University, the primary care physician can adapt to such issues by helping patients to express their problems in sensitive areas and accommodating to the cultural context of the patient. Dr Mirza will be speaking at the Primary Healthcare Conference which will take place as part of the Abu Dhabi Medical Congress (ADMC), from 17 to 19 of October, 2010, at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC). Organised by IIR Middle East, the conference will focus on the challenges being faced by the primary healthcare sector in the region and will promote policies of education and early detection in order to combat the chilling predictions for the health of the region's growing population. The Abu Dhabi Medical Congress is sponsored by Cleveland Clinic Center for Continuing Education and the conference activities have been approved for AMA PRA Category 1 CreditTM. "Western models of communication skills need to be adapted for the local context by accommodating the linguistic, cultural and religious differences of patients," says Dr Mirza. "Arab social themes such as the centrality of the family unit and maintaining one's honour in society can affect how patients present in primary care. For example male patients will be ashamed to admit weakness or female patients may feel guilty if they are infertile. There are also a lot of cultural health beliefs which can affect compliance with medication, e.g. attributing symptoms to jinn possession and the evil eye. Awareness of these issues enables one to adapt the consultation style appropriately and my presentation at ADMC will explore this conceptual domain with a view to providing practical advice for the primary care physician." At ADMC, more than 200 internationally renowned healthcare experts will take to the stage to discuss medical advances, service innovations and efficiency within Primary Healthcare, Patient Safety, Emergency, Rehabilitation and Physical Medicine sectors. Running along side the Congress is a 5,000 sqm exhibition which will attract over 150 companies, looking to showcase their latest products and services and to broaden their business opportunities in these sectors. The American Hospital Dubai, a 144-bed, acute care, general medical/surgical private hospital with a 60 physician multi-specialty group practice and a primary healthcare service line, will be exhibiting at ADMC. For the American Hospital, pparticipation at ADMC will create a forum for American Hospital physicians and Abu Dhabi physicians for future mutual co-operation and exchange of experience. The American Hospital Dubai has expanded to meet the demand for more personalised services, comfort and convenience, while broadening the services and deepening the level of primary healthcare offered. Trade visitors have unlimited access to the exhibition, and may register their participation at any time during the event. For more information about the Primary Healthcare Conference at ADMC, please call +971 4 407 2743 or visit www.abudhabimed.com. -END- Note to Editors About IIR Middle East: For more than 35 years IIR has been the leader in facilitating business knowledge and skills delivered through cutting edge conferences, training programmes and industry led exhibitions. About Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, UAE University: About American Hospital Dubai: For media enquiries please contact: This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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