Thru Other Eyes

Life Outside The Tunnel - Part IV

In this closing article I would like to introduce one of the Middle East's great voices of change and take a look at how a billion Muslims think about some key issues that cause a great deal of friction in Western perceptions.

As I have tried to show in this mini-series, there are many positive and hopeful things happening in the Middle East and in relations between the West and the Muslim world. We can't judge what we don't know and we can't develop informed opinions based on insufficient, skewed or deliberately distorted information. Has it become a dangerous liability that the citizens of the world's most powerful nation, one which has such an outspoken desire and track record of imposing its vision on other parts of the world, primarily see the rest of their world through the narrow tunnel of the American mainstream media?

Life Outside The Tunnel - Part III

It's surprising and can even be transformational when we look outside the tunnel often imposed on how we see the world. Our over-reliance on mainstream media is not only limiting but it may sometimes create more distortion than clarity. Nowhere is this more apparent or important than when it comes to the Middle East and the misunderstandings between the West and the Muslim world. In this installment I would like to turn our attention to the conflict with Iran.



An alternative way forward with Iran

John Bryson Chane, the Episcopal Bishop for the diocese of Washington, D.C. wrote about his recent discussions in Iran with Iranian academic and religious leaders "who are very concerned about the possibility of a US military incursion against their homeland." Given the failure of traditional diplomacy, the Bishop makes a plea for a new creative parallel path of diplomacy:

"A new 21st century understanding of Track II diplomacy, initiated through theological diplomacy, must go hand-in-hand with the formal diplomatic search for the peace that has always been at the centre of the Holy Books of both Christianity and Islam."

He believes

Life Outside The Tunnel - Part II

In order to participate in the democratic process we need to be informed. Unfortunately limits of time and the tunnel vision that mainstream media creates rarely allow us to see the broader picture. This can lead to a lack of understanding and even worse to dangerous misconceptions. When it comes to the Middle East and relations with the Muslim world, our tunnel vision is a true recipe for bad policy and missed opportunities.



In the second part of Life Outside The Tunnel I'd like to share a few more hopeful points of view and developments that you may have missed or had no chance to see.

Life Outside The Tunnel

Our impressions of the conflicts in the Middle East and the tensions between the West and the Muslim world are naturally shaped and limited by what we know. And what we know of these weighty global issues is pretty much limited by the inescapable and inevitable tunnel vision created by our primary source of information – the mainstream media.

For example: The last weeks have been as usual a mixed bag in the Middle East. Bush’s visit was a resounding victory for Israel, an embarrassing defeat for the Palestinians and further confirmation of America’s self-righteousness for the rest of the Arab world. The resolution of the conflict in Lebanon was a welcome respite for the Lebanese but perhaps has sown the seeds for more serious problems in the future. The announcement of back-channel talks between Israel and Syria is hopeful but already the two sides are now fighting out their positions in the media which can only serve to significantly reduce any prospects for eventual success. Egypt’s mediation efforts over a possible Gaza truce between Israel and Hamas seemed to have died a silent death amongst all the real death that continues.

In other words, the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. Or do they? In today’s post I want to present a small tour of some hopeful things that may have been missed because they received such little and fleeting attention, or no attention at all, in the mainstream media. I hope this overview

FOX TV's "24" - The New Fear Factor? Part II

So, why is there such a fuss about “24” and can we put the discussions in a fruitful context for discussion? Think back to the last time when the USA was gripped by fear to the extent the country is today gripped by fear. After WWII, the USA became obsessed by the fear of communists and of nuclear war. And in that period, Hollywood was very active in capitalizing on that fear.

Writing about Hollywood’s fifty or so films of the Cold War, author and film critic Nora Sayre  wrote that cold war films

"…were aimed at an uninformed audience in a decade when almost anything that middle America feared could be related to Communism."

In reviewing one of that era’s most notorious anti-communist films, “Big Jim McLain” starring and produced by big John Wayne, 

FOX TV's "24" - The New Fear Factor? Part I

A few nights ago in a sleepless fit after some clubbing, I was doing some late night channel zapping and came across CNN’s "Larry King Live" (we get it at 3 AM). I saw the cast of Fox’s 24 and heard Larry say, “…Two hours Sunday, two hours Monday, a sensational beginning, by the way. Conservative commentator Laura Ingraham has said "24" is as close to a national referendum on torture as we're going to get. And because people embrace this show, it means they support using torture against terrorists.”

My first thought was, “Huh, he’s talking about just a TV show, right?” Boy, was I wrong. The next morning I fired up the ole laptop, snooped around a bit and discovered that the new season of “24” has caused quite a stir. For those few who may not know, a few details about this season: the villains this year are Islamic terrorists on a suicide bombing spree in American cities, the fourth hour ended with a nuclear explosion in downtown Los Angeles and later in the season American Muslims will apparently be rounded up and placed in internment camps.

It seems that the show has become the subject of