Good bye Turkey, Hello Syria!!!

So we arrived in Ankara, Turkey two days ago. We arrived with mixed feelings. Istanbul is a vibrant, historical, active, beautiful city. Ankara, like many capitol cities, is boring, lacks life, but we have had a good experience here. We heard from Orhan Cengiz today, who is one of the leading human rights lawyers in Turkey. He talked all about the state of Turkish politics, rights etc. He was a bit of a conspiracy theorist and i get the idea that his conspiracy ideas about the military vs. government are spot on! We heard from the Turkish foreign ministry, which was disappointing as all we got from them were political slogans and such. But I guess that is to be expected from government offices.

Today, we leave for Syria, where I will be out of internet contact for the duration of our 5 day visit. So I will say a bit about what we will do, and update later on how it was. Tonight we will sleep in Hama, Syria, which was the site of the 1982 Syrian massacre of the Muslim Brotherhood, in which the city was destroyed by the Syrian government and 38,000 died. The government crushed the Muslim Brotherhood resistance there at a massive cost. We will then go to Damascus for a few days, which is the longest continually inhabited city in the world. Considered the capitol of Middle East culture and history, Damascus will be massively interesting and I will be sure to update on its intricacies. We will go from there to an excellently preserved Crusader Castle in Southern Syria. Then on to Amman, Jordan for a day, before we cross into Israel!

I will update in Israel!!

So this week we are in Istanbul! Istanbul is cool for a lot of reasons. The first is the history. This is where Constantinople was and the entire Holy Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire was ruled from here. Then the Ottomans conquered Istanbul and ruled the Middle East for 4 centuries. The second is the location. It is located on both Europe and Asia and is a unique gateway from Europe to the Middle East. The third is the beauty of the city. There are lots of colors and unique houses and architectural colors!
Day 1: We arrived in Istanbul midday from Cairo by plane, and hit the ground running with a ferry ride on the Bosporus River. The Bosporus is the official dividing line between Europe and Asia. It was a cool, wet day and that was exciting in and of itself coming from hot, dry Cairo. What was cool to see is the intense Turkish nationalism. We have been reading all about the extreme Turkish identity, and the flags and Ataturk pictures were out in force. Although a lot of that may have to do with the fact that tomorrow is the National Republic Day, commemorating the formation of the Turkish state.
The Bosporus trip was beautiful! The river, the hills, the houses, Istanbul was stunning. As a very European, westernized city, it was a huge contrast to Cairo. After our river trip, we broke into smaller groups and I found a small café with some great Turkish food. Our hotel is right off of Taksim Square, the happening place in downtown. I ended up talking baseball with a random American guy, as well, and finished the night off with some amazing Apple Tea. Quite the day!
Day 2: Today we heard from Barchin Yinanc, a newspaper editor for the Turkish Daily News. She spoke generally on many Turkish issues, and was very candid and informative. We have done a lot of reading on Turkey, but she helped fill in the gaps with her inside knowledge.
From there, we put our tourist hats back on and visited the Ottoman Topkapi Palace. That was great and interesting of course. We walked around Istanbul and walked along the Bosporus. Interesting side note: we know one Turk in this country and that is our tour guide. Who do we randomly run into in old downtown 7 hours after we left him? Adil, in a city of 15 million Turks!
Day 3: Went to the Justice and Development Party headquarters and heard from one of their representatives. Turkey is very very interesting politically, with tension between the government and military, controversy over secularism and religion, and how to be 99% Islamic but also modern. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) is the controlling party in the government and has been very successful. Listening to the representative’s talk about Turkish politics from one of the ones shaping it was intriguing.
In an interesting turnaround, we went from there to the American consulate, where we met with the American consul to Istanbul and discussed Turkey’s significance in the world, American interests in Turkey and how all the Middle East/ European puzzle pieces fit together.
Day 4: Today, we went to the Hagia Sophia, which was a cathedral for centuries and the center of the Byzantine Empire, before being taken over by the Ottoman Empire and converted to a mosque. It was the largest building in the world for centuries, and is still considered an architectural marvel. The place was breathtaking and had a unique array of Christian and Muslim symbols on the walls. After that we visited the Blue Mosque, which was somewhat overrated after coming from the Hagia Sophia. We finished the day off at the Grand Bazaar, which was quite the market!
A few more days in Istanbul, then it is 3 days in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, then off to Syria!!

Alexandria, Coptic Wedding and Homework

I apologize for not writing any blog entries recently but I haven’t for a couple of reasons. 1. I have been writing papers so much and taking tests and being busy and such that I haven’t had time. 2. I have been writing papers so much and taking tests and being busy and such that it would have been boring for you to read about. So for those that care I will tell a little bit about the schoolwork I have been doing. We have two classes that has basically been combined into one to take into account all the speakers and lectures on a variety of topics. These two are People and Cultures in the Middle East, and Conflict and Change in the Middle East. We have seven papers to write for the two classes broken up into two rounds. The first round is due this Monday. We have three papers due:
1. Is imperialism the primary problem for the lack of political, social and economic development in the Middle East?
I argue that yes it is.
2. Is religion the main obstacle to women’s and minority rights in the Middle East? I argue that no, culture and traditions are.
3. How can Christians best engage the Muslim world?

On Wednesday we begin our travel component and will fly into Istanbul. Therefore we concluded our Islamic Thought and Practice course, and will take our final for Arabic on Sunday. So among all the papers we have been writing we have been studying for the Islam final (which we already took) and the Arabic final. Luckily for me I have avoided all the madness of scrambling to get papers done, as I am in the final revision stages for all three. My roommates are way behind and are talking about all nighters and such. That is exactly why I worked hard early to get them done, because now I can focus on the Arabic final and relax about it all.
OK so now that we have gotten through the boring stuff, I can tell you about some of the cool things I have done lately.
My Egyptian friend, Maged Raphael, invited me to his sister’s wedding and we invited a couple of my American friends as well. I was really excited because I have heard that Egyptian weddings are quite the cultural phenomenon. It was a Coptic family, so the service was held in a church. There, I saw several of my other Coptic friends that I have met and talked for a bi. It lasted all of 20 minutes, with no kiss at the end. It was extremely religious and informal. Weird. I then assumed everyone was going to the reception, because if the Americans had been invited then surely all my other Coptic friends that I had met would be invited to. Not so, and I put my foot in my mouth by asking.
So we are at the reception, where I know about 4 people, and its held at a 5 star hotel in Giza. Beautiful and classy. The bride and groom come in to a really sweet band of 11 drummers, a bagpipe player and crazy Middle Eastern horn player. This was very culturally interesting! Once in the reception, the first dance happened to Celine Dion, and then everyone was invited to the dance floor. Thinking it was a couples dance I declined, but soon found out that it was just a big group dance session. So for the next three hours we danced to a range of American rap songs, Celine Dion, Arabic songs and techno. The Egyptians were terrible dancers and just loved going around in circles all the time. It was very chaotic but I loved it. Their dancing is extremely modest, with no co-ed contact or shaking of the backside. So at one point, I leaned over to my friend Chris and told him that to make our ridiculous story complete, we needed to find ourselves in the middle of the dance floor by ourselves at one point with all the Egyptians around clapping (as had been happening). We found our moment, capitalized on it, and we have been immortalized in history. I was told, “you are a beautiful dancer” and they urged us to stay in the middle of the dance floor the rest of the night. We were awkward about dominating someone else’s wedding reception and withdrew to explore the hotel. We ended up climbing several ladders to get to the very top of the roof about 16 stories high and looked over Cairo. That was pretty cool! We went back and dinner was served at about 1 AM and we ate and went home. The whole thing felt like we were in the movie Wedding Crashers, and it was good for a lot of laughs.
The whole group went to Alexandria last weekend. I was surprised to find out that Alexandria is a pretty chill place and much quieter than Cairo. We ate lunch in a restaurant beside the Mediterranean and visited the Alexandria library, built on the site of the Great Library (one of the 7 wonders of the Ancient world). The library was cool but very modern and had nothing to do with its historical counterpart. We found a great juice stand and café and spent the rest of the time there, watching the sunset. Alexandria didn’t have all that much to do, but had a great atmosphere!
This past Tuesday I was able to go to the Think and Do oasis, an hour north of Cairo. I have volunteered at the NGO, Think and Do every Tuesday doing office work, but getting to see the oasis was a golden opportunity. At the oasis, they do vocational training, life lessons, and development work with poor village Egyptians, working to give them skills to advance themselves economically. It was very interesting and great to see.
So that is all for now. It’s a crazy 3 or 4 days and then we fly to Istanbul!
Thanks for reading.

Homestays, Arab League, Siwa Oasis

It was the best of times and the worst of times. That is how my home stay went last week. All 30 of us were placed with different families all over Cairo to stay for a week. Some were with wealthy Christian families, some were with cultured Muslim families who knew English, and others like me, were with poor Muslim families who knew only Arabic. I had actually requested to be with a poor, Muslim family who knew no English, because I wanted to see the real Egypt and also work on my Arabic skills.

So the first night, I went to my family’s little flat in Barageel, a poor borough in Cairo. Where I lived, it was all dirt streets, sheep and goats all over the place, took tooks (the Egyptian form of a rickshaw) donkey-pulled carts and Egyptians in conservative Islamic dress (it is jokingly called the Islamic Republic of Barageel for its conservative Muslim residents.) My family was a 36 yr old bank worker named Yasir, his wife introduced to me simply as “Mama”, and their two kids: 7 yr old boy named Fahat, and a 2 year old girl named Shahat. A funny side note is that the two kids names mean Jaguar and Canteloupe and Fahat loved to act like a Jaguar! They didn’t speak a word of English, so over the course of the week my Arabic got a lot of practice. Traveling across Cairo was also a daily adventure. I took rickety microbuses and sometimes even hung out the door just to get a ride during rush hour. I loved this part!

Their flat consisted of two rooms, one of which I slept in and the other was the bedroom for the rest of the family. The bathroom was simply a hole in the floor and they didn’t own a stove. We ate our meals on the floor. Even though I consider myself an adventurer, over the week it became kind of hard to live in this poverty. Using a hole for a bathroom was only fun the first time, eating with our hands on the floor lost its amusement as well. Also the conservative Islam made it really hard for me to interact with the mother. She mostly stayed in her room with the door closed while the rest of the family hung out with me in my room. The boredom was crushing as my Arabic ran out and so our conversations were pretty limited. Most days I had class in Agouza, but two days I spent all day with the family and they slept all day while I basically twiddled my thumbs. That part killed me, because I don’t deal well with the boredom, and when it came time to say goodbye I was ready to return to normal routine. The thing I learned most about my little average Egyptian family and others like it, is that there is a serious lack of ambition. The children are not pushed to excel in school, they don’t ever want to leave their poor neighborhood or save and try to change their circumstances. They are simply content with their poverty, which was hard for me as a Westerner to understand.

The next day we visited the Arab League. It is basically the Middle East version of a regional United Nations. 22 countries are a part of the Arab League and we were able to meet with the chief of staff, Hassam Yusef. He is famous as the #2 guy in the Arab League and is often on American talk shows and in the news. He spoke with us on a range of topics from the Israel/ Palestine conflict, Arab unity, democracy, the role of the US in the Middle East, Iran and the shifting of power in the region to how the Arab League functions. After our meeting with him we got a surprise invite to sit in on the 3^rd International Day of Non Violence summit at the Arab League. We watched and listened to ambassadors from all over the world contribute ideas on how to apply the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi to today. Believe it or not there were some who thought that non-violence could never work today, while others had a vision of a utopian society where everyone laid down their weapons. It was very interesting to watch!

We just got back from Siwa, an oasis town in the Sahara desert. One of our friends lives there and studies in Cairo. The town has a beautiful little micro culture from the isolation. They are Berber or Africans who were on pilgrimage to Mecca and stumbled onto the oasis and built a town. Siwans are extremely conservative Muslim and their women are completely covered in public with no inch of skin showing (which actually looks scary with black hoods over their faces.) The first day we visited the temple of the Oracle which is famous because Alexander the Great made the trip to Siwa to hear his future foretold by the Oracle there. We swam in a cold spring and rode bikes throughout the Oasis and then watched a sunset from an island in the salt sea in the desert. The salt is so concentrated in this body of water that we could literally float effortlessly. It was such a cool feeling!

The next day we went out into the Sahara desert and sand boarded down sand dunes. All of us guys wrestled around and enjoyed the fine sand. Our Bedouin guides took us to both a cold spring and a hot spring in different locations. I watched the sun set over the desert and then we went to the Bedouin camp where we would sleep for the night. We listened and danced with a Siwan band. Then we slept in the Great Sand Sea, the Sahara, and it was one of the most magical experiences of my life. This trip was the best weekend trip we have had so far.

Christianity and Islam

One of the most exciting things to me about the Middle East, which comes with much sadness and confusion as well, is the religiously charged atmosphere. The majority of Egyptians, Muslims and Christians alike, devoutly practice their religion. Social pressures exist to follow the rituals of one’s own belief and to be fully committed to one’s religion. I have asked a question of many Christians and Muslims here. “How do you identify yourself and how do you rank those identities?” Almost every Egyptian has told me, “I am a (Christian or Muslim) first and then an Egyptian.” Every Egyptian identifies with one of these two religions and has usually been born into that religion. But despite being born into their beliefs, most are much more committed to their faith than your average religious American.

There have been many different opinions about how the two religions are viewed here and how they relate to each other. Each group sees the other differently. It has been hard to put my finger on the religious climate here due to the diversity of opinions about Christian persecution, moderate Islam, and what the true nature of Islam is. There have been three different groups that we have heard from predominantly about religion, the Christians, Muslims and Muslim background believers in Christ. I will detail the majority opinions that I have heard but keep in mind that this is all from my own experiences. We have heard from all three groups in formal settings and I also have personal friends in each as well.

The Christians here are mostly Coptic, which is not only the Orthodox tradition but also the ethnic group that they belong to. Most see themselves as being persecuted every day by the Egyptian government (which is completely Muslim) through discriminatory laws and they feel that their Muslim neighbors see them as “unclean” and second-class citizens. I have heard from other Christians that they are completely accepted by their Muslim neighbors and each is left to worship in their own way, but this viewpoint is not the opinion of the majority (from my experience). The Coptic Church teaches the values of being persecuted and honors the saints who have been killed for their faith. They believe that they are in an age of persecution and fear the day that Egypt becomes an Islamic state (like Iran) and they are made strangers in their own land. Many are migrating to the West to escape this persecution. The persecution is felt most from the Egyptian government and the Muslim Brotherhood (the powerful group that would surely win any free election in Egypt, but wish to implement Shariah law in Egypt).

The Muslims that I have come in contact with seem very tolerant and moderate. We recently met with Islam Online, a group working to educate Westerners as well as native Muslims about a more loving Islam. It seems that extreme views of hating “infidels” have been scaled back on the streets of Egypt since the 1990’s. Many influential preachers in Egyptian Islam have preached the values of love for their Christian brothers and I have seen a real passion in some Muslims for drawing the two communities together. Since I have been here I have prayed in a mosque beside Muslims and fasted during Ramadan with them. They have also shown themselves more than willing to talk about the love of Jesus (who is one of their prophets and the 2^nd most influential person in Islam, however Christians and Muslims differ on his divinity). My Muslim friends have a great respect for all of our commitments to our faith and have not tried in any way to convert us to Islam. When asked about radical Islam and jihad and violence in their religion, they are quick to condemn that as “not true Islam”. They say that they misinterpret the Qur’an and reject them as followers of the same God that they pray to. Overall, I have met many tolerant, loving Muslims who live a beautiful life in service of God, just living it out in different ways than I do and under a different creed.

The third group is the most interesting and probably the most enlightening on the situation between the two religions. These are the former Muslims who have converted to Christianity. They prefer to be called Muslim Background Believers. Much of the persecution of Christians has to do with the inability to legally change your religion from Islam to Christianity. When an Egyptian gives up Islam, their family and community reject them. The culture here is very restraining here as far as religious freedom goes. We have heard from two different people who left Islam for Christianity and began to preach the gospel to their friends and were jailed for it in the 1990’s. They have since been left alone by the state and continue to work to gain followers for Christ (which has been fairly successful given the impossible culture). Their faith has been amazing to hear about! Some continue to perform Islamic rituals as a structure for their Christian worship, such as the five prayers and Ramadan, as well as the zakat (the required giving of money to the poor).

They can offer the best perspective on each religion as they have been believers in each at one point, and still partly having a foot in each world (living in an Islamic culture, as Arab Christians). One man sees Islam as a very dangerous religion and claims that tolerant loving Muslims misinterpret the Qur’an. The true ideology of Islam is the heaven and hell, infidel and believer faith that we see in the West, he claims. He says that moderate Muslims deviate from the true Islam (as they would say radicals are not following the true Islam). However he was very happy with the moderate Islamic viewpoint towards Christians but said,” Islam has theoretical love and tolerance, but does not practice it.” For example, many Muslims say that whatever religion one practices is ok, but force their children to be Muslim. He also made a wonderful point about the Islamic view of heaven and hell and eternal rewards for the deeds done on earth, rather than the Christian viewpoint of heaven and hell depending on a loving relationship with Jesus.

In conclusion, I believe that there are different Islams out there. Some do persecute Christians and treat them as second class citizens. Al Quaeda wish to kill Americans under their interpretation of the Qur’an. Our Muslim teacher sees Christians as her brothers and sisters and we will all be in heaven someday. Each person’s Islam is different. I think that the Islam may be more open as one is better educated. Most of my Muslim friends here are highly educated and fully accepting of Christianity and reject radical Islam. All in all, Islam has different faces.

Ramadan and Football... that is what Egypt does

Ramadan is now over, but before it ended I was able to fast for a day with some Muslim friends. I got several of my American friends to do it with us. Of course the Muslims have to fast from food, water, and tobacco during the sunlit hours every day during the month of Ramadan so they were excited for us to feel the hunger and thirst with them! We woke up at 3:45 in the morning and ate our last meal and drink for the day. Then we went back to sleep and went throughout our day. The hunger didn’t bother me because of the meal during the night, but the thirst was hard from walking around in Cairo all day (it was our service project day and the NGO I work at is a long ways away). We had planned to meet at a Syrian restaurant for iftar (the breaking of the fast). Once the call to prayer was sent out over the loudspeakers from the surrounding mosques, signaling the time to break the fast, we ate dates and drank water. The first drink of cold water made me really appreciate the month of Ramadan and why Muslims see it as a holy month of sacrifice. We ate a wonderful meal and it was a great experience!

On Tuesday, several of us guys were invited to attend a football match here in Cairo. It was the Egyptian league, and the two teams playing were ranked #2 and #3 in Egypt. The #3 team won and it was really fun to watch! The most interesting thing was the 900 riot police every 5 feet around the field. That really gives validity to all the stories you hear about the riots and violence over soccer in Africa and abroad. No such excitement happened at our game but the fans were pretty raucous and it was fun to see!

I will have a post ready in a few days detailing a few events that we have been to involving Muslim/Christian relations. It is a very different story depending on who you talk to regarding the way the two religions interact in Egypt. I have collected notes on my experiences with my Coptic friends and my Muslim friends and how they see the religious issues here. It should be a good post, so stay tuned for that in a few days!

Trip to Ancient Egypt

This weekend we went to Luxor, which is the location of the ancient city of Thebes and where all the Ancient Egypt sites are. We took an overnight train to get there from Cairo and spent most of the first day laying around by the hotel pool on the roof. From our rooftop perch we had a great view of the Nile and the Temple of Luxor. Our various teachers had laid a pretty heavy reading load on us for the trip (which for some reason, I don’t mind) and I spent a lot of the day relaxing and reading.

On Saturday, we began our two-day tour experience, and went to the Valley of the Kings. This is the site of 140 something tombs of Pharaohs and family. We were able to go into three of them, Ramses II, Ramses III, and Ramses IX. All of the artifacts and treasures had been removed from the tombs but the walls were still beautifully painted with scenes from Ancient Egypt. Most of the painting centered on death and the afterlife and the greatness of the Pharaohs.

We then went to the Hedu Temple, which was the temple of Ramses III. As was the ancient Egyptian custom, Pharaohs were gods and their temples were extravagant. The palace was adjoined. Most of the temples that we saw were fairly similar in that they had massive columns, a holiest of holies shrine, an altar for sacrifices to the Gods and many edifices and statues. The Hedu Temple was particularly interesting because it is widely believed that Ramses III is the Pharaoh from the Bible. If that is true, then that temple and palace would be the setting for all the visits from Moses and Aaron, the staff turning into a snake and the Let my People Go story. Pharaoh would have watched all the plagues from this site as well. Seeing this also gives a little more clarity on why the Pharaoh was so reluctant to let the Hebrew slaves go. They were building these temples and monuments. Our tour guide told about how long and how hard it was to build each temple with all the columns and stones being several hundred tons. I think now I understand a little bit more about why Pharaoh was so hardened to the idea of losing his slaves.

The next day we visited the temple of Karnak and the Temple of Luxor. Both were once again, extremely impressive and architectural marvels. What amazed me about everything that we saw, was just how much had survived since 1500 BC (when most of all this was built). There is a lot of hieroglyphic writings all over the walls, statues of Gods and Pharaohs’ and many of the structures are completely intact. This is a tribute to the solid stone that it was built from and the amazing quality of craftsmanship that was employed.

After a couple of days of tours, a day and some evenings by the pool, and a thorough amazement for ancient Egypt we headed home to Cairo by overnight train. We have a day to relax and get fully prepared for classes again (which is hours of reading!).

Thanks for Following!