Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May/June 1998, Pages 67-70

Northeast News

As Somali Civil War Smolders, Bostonians Help Refugees Adjust to New Life in U.S.

By David P. Johnson, Jr.

Although the long and confusing Somali civil war no longer captures American headlines, the conflict is by no means over, according to a Somali activist assisting refugees to start new lives in Boston.

“Even today there is no central government,” said Abdul Hussein, executive director and co-founder of the Somali Development Center in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. “The whole idea is that a reconciliation is still going on, yet there has been a total collapse [of that effort].”

Although the massive starvation and large massacres that shocked the world and prompted foreign intervention in the early 1990s are no longer threats, there are isolated killings and many Somalis feel unsafe. He cited recent killings in the cities of Hopio and Kismayo as examples of the continuing violence which drives Somalis out of their country.

Close to 3,000 Somali refugees, almost all of them Muslim, have settled in Boston in recent years, creating one of the larger concentrations in the U.S. According to the 37-year-old Hussein, most Somalis arriving in Boston are traumatized from the war. “They lost everything, they are emotionally unstable and many families are headed by single mothers,” he said. “Close to 80 to 85 percent of the Somalis who are coming here are faced with culture shock.”

Explaining that young children are usually the only ones who do not suffer some form of dislocation, Hussein noted that most Somalis are nomads and illiterate in their own language. Because they worked primarily as herders, most Somalis did not have experience with jobs having set hours. With its emphasis on regular employment and on governmental and social institutions outside extended families and the clan, life in modern America requires a different set of skills.

Public attitudes toward immigrants had changed by the 1990s, Hussein said, adding that reductions in welfare and social service programs hit Somalis hard.

“They were dropped in the middle of the city and expected to swim,” he said.

A former computer programmer who came to the U.S. in 1988, Hussein has a degree from Boston’s Wentworth Institute of Technology. “Because the numbers of refugees in Boston was increasing, I wanted to do what I could,” Hussein said. “It was total chaos.”

He said the Somali Development Center was founded in March 1996 to provide job training, English lessons and practical assistance, such as providing access to housing and health care. The center will often sort mail, showing Somalis how to differentiate between junk advertisements and official letters, which must be responded to.

Hussein had been working at the high technology company Electronic Data Systems when he brought a co-worker, Susan Crowley, to a meeting on Somali issues. Also a computer programmer, Crowley had helped various non-profit groups in the past and was touched by the problems the Somali immigrants faced. She decided to get involved, and eventually she and Hussein left their jobs at EDS and opened the Development Center.

Crowley and Hussein credit James Driscoll of the Waltham-based division of EDS for getting the project going with a generous two-year grant.

“They opened the door for us,” Crowley said, adding that once the center was up and running, other grants followed.

Director of programs and development Crowley said the center concentrates on education. “The whole emphasis is on the youth and to get them assimilated into America and the way to succeed is through education,” she said.

Classes include English as a second language, computer, math, adult literacy and the Qur’an. There are classes for adults, as well as a children’s program on weekends.

In addition, the center produces a Somali-language TV program on Boston’s local access cable Channel 24, which airs Wednesday at 7 p.m. The program is usually devoted to one topic of practical interest to the community, such as access to health care or housing. “Housing is the number one priority for the Somali community in Boston,” Hussein said. Not only are rental units expensive and scarce, Somalis are used to living with large numbers of relatives. Landlords often object to extended families sharing a two- or three-bedroom flat and encourage the families to break up. When that happens, Hussein said, they often cannot pay the rent, since it is only through pooling resources that low-income wage earners can survive.

In addition, one TV show each month is produced by Somali youth and dedicated to a topic affecting them. A recent program discussed smoking, which Hussein said is not widespread in Somalia, but is catching on among students in Boston. “We let them engage, let them discuss,” he said of the youth program.

Crime has been another major problem. Most Somalis live in the inner city neighborhoods of Mission Hill, Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, which tend to have high crime rates and poor public schools. Hussein said Somali youngsters are often attacked on their way to or in school. Some children also made fun of the scarves worn by most Somali women. Avoiding the police, as they learned to do during the civil war, some parents kept their children out of school, while other youngsters banded together and fought back. This led to several arrests and charges that the Somalis had created street gangs.

Hussein and the center’s staff helped set up a series of meetings with police, parents of other students and the Suffolk County district attorney. Hussein said Somali students were told what rights they have but also urged to obey the police.

The children are also encouraged to practice Islam. The Somali community uses the mosques in Roxbury and in Cambridge, as well as the student-organized prayers at Northeastern University and MIT.

Although the immigrants come from various clans and different parts of Somalia, the problems of adjusting to Boston are so overwhelming that opinions about the civil war are left behind.

“We are one tribe here,” Hussein said. “We are Somalis. We are really coming together. We worry about the present.”

The Somali Development Center is located at 205 Green St., Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 and can be reached at (617) 522-0700.

“The Revenge of God: Secularism Retreats”

The increasing political power of religious fundamentalists is not confined to the Middle East. Rather, it is a virtually world-wide phenomenon, Dr. Samuel F. Huntington of Harvard said Feb. 19 in a speech at Boston University.

The director of Harvard’s John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Huntington made his remarks during a talk on “Religion, Politics and Peace,” which was sponsored by the Institute for Philosophy and Religion at BU.

“Throughout the world, religious identities are increasing. The power and salience of religion has increased,” Huntington explained. “There is more questioning of the secular state. This could be called secularism in retreat, or the revenge of God.”

In Turkey, for instance, the secular state created by Atatôrk is under criticism from the Islamic movement. He said Russia is increasingly Orthodox, while in India the BJP wants to replace the secularism of Nehru with Hindu rule. In Israel, Ben-Gurion’s secular Jewish state is being repudiated by the increasingly powerful Jewish Orthodox communities.

Since the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War, the identities of many nations have been increasingly based on religion, with governments using faith to define their legitimacy, he said. The rise of religious consciousness has generated an increase of conflict based on religion and on persecution. “Religiously defined states discriminate on religion,” Huntington said. “If countries define their identities on religion, then deviation from orthodoxy can be considered to be treason.”

Huntington said that while persecution of Christians in some Muslim states and in China has been documented, more Muslims than Christians probably face persecution overall.

Algeria cancelled elections several years ago when it seemed fundamentalists would win, while Turkey’s military last year forced the Islamist Welfare Party from power.

A New Arab Nationalism

In the Arab world, memories of the shah of Iran’s secular, pro-Western government being swept away by fundamentalist Islam remain fresh. “Muslim leaders are haunted by the image of the shah being overthrown,” he said.

In order to co-opt Islamic movements, some governments are adapting Muslim symbolism to bolster their regimes and others are sharing power with Muslims. “In the Arab world a new nationalism is emerging,” Huntington said, combining Nasser’s secularism with political Islam.

The world’s fastest growing religion, Islam, is not inimical to democracy, despite claims to the contrary, he stated. “There are people who argue that Islam is inherently undemocratic,” Huntington said. “Well, I don’t buy that. There are elements of Islam that are compatible with democracy.”

Huntington went on to state that Catholicism was considered anti-democratic until the 20th century and the Second Vatican Council. “All religions have various strands. One or another are dominant at any given time,” he said.

Although religion as a political force remains weakest in the West, he cited Bosnia and Northern Ireland as exceptions. Moreover, the European Common Market’s “sustained exclusion and humiliation of Turkey…reaffirms Europe’s Christianness,” he said.

Huntington was critical of official U.S. responses to reports of religious persecution. The Clinton administration has created an advisory committee on religious liberties and, in addition, the Wolf-Specter bill would impose economic sanctions on nations which were found to be engaging in religious persecutions. Huntington said these measures would be “most ineffective” in combating the problem.

He recommended instead that tendencies within each religion toward religious tolerance should be encouraged. He suggested, however, that it is an uphill fight. “Religious liberty is, I fear, a field where it is difficult to be optimistic without being utopian,” Huntington stated.

Women Make Some Progress Under Iranian Revolution

“Every time we talk about women from the Middle East, we get this image of this veiled, passive, miserable, wretched creature,” Dr. Shahla Haeri, assistant professor of anthropology at Northeastern University, said during an April 19 lecture, “Women, Politics and Social Change in Iran,” held at Northeastern University. “The overwhelming image of Iran is fundamentalist terrorism,” she added.

Haeri went on to state that there is some truth in both views: many Middle Eastern women are veiled and Iran did take American diplomats hostage. “But neither case is quite correct,” she explained, noting that the situation of women since the Iranian revolution is varied, as are the women themselves.

Herself a believing Muslim and the granddaughter of Ayatollah Haeri Mazandarani, Haeri said, “Women do not constitute a single category. The Muslim world stretches from Morocco to Indonesia. There is quite a diversity among them. In Iran, women are ruler and peasant, urban and tribal and nomadic.”

In her talk, Haeri said she would concentrate on how women of the professional, urban middle class have fared since the revolution because that category of women is influential, but is often ignored. Studies often concentrate on women who are tribal, working class or poor.

Much of the discussion involved the veil, which in Iran does not cover the entire face, but frames it. Optional under the shah, it became a symbol of the revolution, becoming mandatory in June 1981.

Even so, there is still variety. According to Haeri, women who support the revolution wear dark scarves covering their hair and framing their face. Women wishing to demonstrate more freedom allow their hair to show on top and favor colorful scarves.

Women are required to wear a chador, a long robe, in public. Haeri said, “Underneath, of course, women may wear mini-skirts. Iranian women have always been very fashionable.” When women arrive home, they can close the doors, draw the curtains, remove their chadors and play music and enjoy themselves. This duality has lead to what some observers call “cultural schizophrenia.”

She also noted that use of the veil predates Islam, as ladies of the Byzantine and Persian aristocracies hid their faces, and their jewels, from common people in public. “The veil was a mark of distinction and respect,” she said.

In pre-Islamic Arabia women sometimes wore veils to indicate that they were not open to advances from men. As Islam took hold, that tradition continued.

Haeri said, “In the minds of all the Islamic men a veiled woman is a respectable woman.”

In politics, changes have come since the 1970s. “Politically Iranian women are quite aware,” she said. Some of this political awareness was created by the revolution, during which thousands of women took to the streets to hear speeches. “This served to raise the level of consciousness,” the professor said.

While the religious faction consolidated its power after the fall of the shah, and gained greater legitimacy during the long war with Iraq, Haeri said the role of women is far from subservient.

“Women in droves are running for election. They were everywhere. They ran in their veils,” she said, noting that in last year’s election between 130 and 190 women sought office.

The council must approve all candidates, she explained. Women may run for parliament, but not president. The daughter of an ayatollah did challenge that rule last year, Haeri said, but was rejected by the council.

She also credited his reputation for advocating women’s rights with helping Syed Mohammed Khatami win his surprise landslide victory last year over Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri a year ago. (For more information, see: “Iran’s Election—Five Views,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August/September, 1997, pp. 10-13.)

Legally, the shah had sought to protect rights of women with the Family Protection Law. It had restricted polygamy and granted women the right to sue for divorce. The revolution abolished that law.

However, Haeri explained that women began demanding that some provisions of the law be restored. “The state was claiming that Islam was very women friendly. Finally, women said, ‘alright, let us have our Islamic rights.’ They are managing to get some of them back.”

There are many women lawyers and women may even become judges, although they must remain in an advisory role to the chief justice in a case, Haeri said. In the arts, women have made considerable strides. With the lifting of the earlier ban on public music, women have flooded into classes to learn various instruments and have been singing under limited circumstances.

“Women do play in the big groups and women can sing in the chorus if you can’t hear their voices clearly,” Haeri said.

In other arts, there are four female film directors and many excellent women novelists and poets, Haeri said, giving women prominence in the flourishing of Iranian arts.

Haeri stressed that there is a “huge difference between Iran and the Taliban [movement now controlling much of Afghanistan]. The only good thing about Taliban is that it has shown Iranians that there is such a thing as relativity.” She said there is no chance that the Taliban, who are devote Sunni Muslims, will spread into Iran, which is not only Shi’i Muslim, but has different traditions as well.

In conclusion, Haeri stated, “Women realize they have to fight for their rights. Iranian women have been tremendously courageous. It is quite positive and optimistic.”

French Library Highlights Arab Daughters

Presenting the true story of Arab-American women is the goal of Dr. Evelyn Shakir, who seeks to demolish stereotypes with her new book, Bint Arab.

Relating the stories of Arab-American women in their own words, she portrays individual tales of accomplishment and courage as they make the transition to a new society.

“Most people outside the [Arab] community don’t know much about the community at all, especially the women,” Shakir said March 5 at the French Library and Cultural Center in Boston, where she read from and signed copies of the book.

Bint Arab has two meanings, she told the audience of some 30 people. Literally, it means daughter of an Arab, but it could also refer to someone of Arab descent. In a project that Shakir has worked on periodically for 10 years, she interviewed and tape recorded dozens of oral histories of immigrants, as well as their daughters.

An English literature professor at Bentley College in Waltham, MA, Shakir said she chose different types of people to unearth as wide a range of experiences as possible. “I wanted to show different generations, social class and perspectives,” she stated.

The project started when she talked with her mother in 1976. “I got bicentennial fever and got a tape recorder and started interviewing my mother.” She then moved on to record her aunts and family friends, eventually traveling to other cities for yet more oral histories.

Shakir started reading from the story of her mother, Hannah, who arrived in Boston as a small child. Hannah was over 90 years old when Shakir interviewed her for the book.

Another woman in the book recalled discrimination and ignorance at Radcliffe; while a third remembered growing up in Beirut, where she received a French classical education, with its wealth of women writers, yet had to remain the dutiful daughter.

Much of the conflict in Arab-American families has come from differing views of the role of women, Shakir explained. In the Old World, “the honor of the family depends on the chastity of the women, especially the virginity of the daughters,” she said.

Shakir grew up in Boston’s West Roxbury neighborhood, home to many Arabs, and received degrees from Wellesley College, Harvard and Boston Universities.

The audience enjoyed the readings. Dr. Nadia Azzam Kassissieh, a Boston physician who grew up in Beirut, said she identified with what was read. “Some of her paragraphs were about me, my experience,” she said.

Shakir, herself a second-generation Lebanese American, explained that the first sizable wave of Arab immigration, from 1880 to 1920, came mostly from Lebanon. “Most were Christian Lebanese,” she said. “The Mount Lebanon area lost 25 percent of its population to emigration.” Some 100,000 came to the United States, while others went to Africa, Latin America, Canada and Australia.

Some immigrants came to escape anti-Christian persecution and forced conscription into the Ottoman army. Others came to sell goods, often religious artifacts, such as crosses made from olive wood from the Holy Land or bottles of water allegedly from the Jordan River, but often obtained in the U.S. In addition, the Christian Arabs had had contact with missionaries and many were simply curious about the New World.

Jennifer Raymond, program director for the French Library, explained that every March, the institution highlights the culture of a French-speaking nation other than France. In the past, Haiti, the French West Indies and Switzerland have been chosen. “Lebanon was just a really rich source,” Raymond said. “I’ve learned so much.”

An exhibit of paintings by Lebanese artists hung on the walls in the reception hall. One of the artists, Mona Yazbeck, came from Beirut to participate in the events. She attended Shakir’s reading and the reception that followed. One of Yazbeck’s endeavors on display was a book of her paintings, which accompanied descriptions, in French, of Lebanon made by various French writers and intellectuals who toured the nation. “It’s like traveling in Lebanon,” Yazbeck said.

The Lebanese programs also included a presentation on architecture, a panel discussion on literature, a cooking demonstration, a piano recital, a wine tasting, folkloric dancing, a slide show of the country and several films, including “Wild Flowers: The Women of South Lebanon.”

Naseer Shemma Strikes Right Note

The haunting tones of the oud,or lute, echoed through Northeastern University’s Blackman Auditorium April 2 as Naseer Shemma played to an enthusiastic crowd.

Sponsored by the Institute of Near Eastern & African Studies in Cambridge, Northeastern’s Master of African American Artists in Residence Program and the university’s Arabic Heritage Club, the concert featured a wide of variety of songs, all composed by Shemma.

Born in Iraq and now living in Tunisia, Shemma demonstrated his mastery of various styles, making music that was alternately melancholy, subdued, playful and humorous.

Shemma received thunderous applause for “The Dream of Mariam,” in which Mariam and her lover whisper to each other. He played using only one hand, demonstrating enormous skill.

The lamenting tone of “It Happened at Al-Amiriyya” was originally performed on the first anniversary of the bombing during the Gulf war in which some 800 civilians were killed in a Baghdad shelter.

On a happier note, Shemma played “The Joy of Birds,” which started with isolated, plaintive notes and finished with a cacophony of high-pitched wailing.

The program was opened by Marwan Bakri, an architecture major from Palestine and president of Northeastern University’s Arabic Heritage Club, and by Wafaa’ Salman of the Institute of Near Eastern & African Studies. Recordings of the concert will be sold in the future. Call the Institute at (617) 499-9595 for more information.

Harvard Hosts Princely Art Exhibit

This summer, Americans will have the unusual opportunity to see some of the greatest Islamic paintings in existence. From May 16 through Aug. 9, Harvard University’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum will host “Princes, Poets and Paladins: Islamic and Indian Paintings from the Collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan.”

The prince is the brother of the Aga Khan, leader of the world’s 15 million Ismaili Muslims.

Called by Harvard “one of the most important private collections of Persian paintings in the world,” the exhibit will include 147 paintings and drawings from Turkey, Iran and India, ranging from the early 14th to the early 20th century.

“This is important because it’s a very famous collection,” said Rochelle Kessler, acting assistant curator, Department of Islamic and Later Indian Art. She said the works encompass “really quite a span” in styles, including Persian, Turkish, Rajput and later Indian work produced under the sponsorship of British patrons, known as company paintings.

The masterpieces in the exhibit include what Kessler called “the crown jewel” of Persian painting, “The Court of Gayumars,” 1522-25, which has not been shown in the United States for nearly 20 years; and the “Shahnama” which was produced for the Shah Tahmasp. In addition, three bound manuscripts also will be presented.

Kessler said the exhibit came to Harvard by accident. It was to be shown during the summer at the Reitberg Museum in Zurich, but complications prevented that museum from hosting the show until fall. After that the exhibit returns to its permanent home in Geneva. Harvard’s Sackler will be its only venue in the U.S.

The Sackler is located at 485 Broadway in Cambridge, MA, and open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday from 1-5 p.m. Admission is $5, senior citizens, $4. Call (617) 496-8576 for information.