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Location: Monterey, California, United States

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Jordan Class Day Two Email

All,

Today was rather interesting, and our teacher proved to be a welcome change of pace. She was calm and more focused on teaching than on drilling us on the previous night's reading. Our subject was honour killings and while she certainly considered them deplorable and not in anyway in keeping with Islam, she is definitely conservative in her views. She did not support unjustified honour killings, but there was an implicit message that a girl truly guilty of "dishonouring the family ( i.e. committing adultery), might very well warrant such an action, or at the very least some sort of legal response. It was interesting to be privy to this point of view. The entire idea of Sharif (Family Honor) is foreign. The word Sheriff comes from this word. The root means to oversee.

To balance it out, we had a meeting with the journalist, Laila Al-Atrash, I mentioned before. She is definitely an outspoken proponent of women's rights, and she had some wonderful insights into the issue from an Arab perspective. She was a broadcaster in Qatar for many years, and writes a column in Dustur (a Jordanian Paper) on women's rights. Needless to say we agreed on quite a few things (everything actually), including sharing a rather a dim view of American foreign policy (blaming it quite justly for many problems in the Middle East), a near outright condemnation of globalization (which she likened to a form of economic domination and certainly not a solution for the world's problems), and the fact that the true method of achieving change in the Middle East (or anywhere) is through education of the young. When asked by one student what she would do to help realize women's rights were she the Wazir (minister- Vizer in Farsi) of Education of Jordan she replied that she would distribute books on equality and understanding to various schools (to be included in the curriculum), and make them widely available. Possibly the best answer ever to that question. During speaking hour I always get (from one of our teachers) "If you were the King of Saudi Arabia, what would you do to achieve world peace?" To which I usually reply, "Ummm..."

At any rate, it was a wholly interesting, if laid back, day. Tomorrow we have the same calm teacher. Thursday we have psycho teacher again. I think she might actually resort to rapping the old ruler across our knuckles for wrong answers. It is beneficial though (I keep telling myself).

We finished off the day with a small adventure to the sports track. My friend Inas (from the desert training photos) is a dedicated runner and so I was going to accompany her and finish my homework while she ran. Unfortunately, it was closed, but the security guy bought us a cup of coffee and we talked to him for a bit in Arabic. The adventure part was crossing the road on the way back. All for now, take care.

Joel

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