By: Felice Friedson/The Media Line
Professor Mohammed S. DajaniDaoudi is the founding director of Wasatia, “the first Islamic movement to advocate achieving peace and prosperity through the promotion of a culture of moderation.”
After living the life of a self-described “radical Palestinian activist” from his college years at the American University in Beirut, and later as a member of Fatah into the mid-‘70s, DajaniDaoudi moved to an academic worldview, earning multiple graduate degrees and teaching in a number of universities while developing Wasatia and its quest for moderation. He recently resigned from his position at Al-Quds University following negative feedback from a trip he organized to take students to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Professor DajaniDaoudi spoke with The Media Line’s Felice Friedson at TML’s Mideast Bureau.
TML: You are about to open the first PhD program for Palestinians. Why is it that it never existed…a PhD program for Palestinians?
Dajani: The Palestinian universities did not feel that they were qualified to set up PhD programs so there haven’t been many. There are some in Arabic and some in religion; however, there isn’t any single PhD program on reconciliation, on comparative religion, on empathy — on topics that are so important for dialogue with the other and understanding the religion of the other. For instance, most who study Islam in Palestinian universities never study Judaism, Christianity, or about religions around the world. As a result, they have misperceptions about the other. That’s why I believe this program is so important. We have signed a memorandum of understanding with Friedrich Schiller University where Palestinians, Israelis and international [students] can study in this program for two years here before going for one year to Jena, Germany, where they develop their thesis and dissertation with the German professors and receive their degree from Friedrich Schiller University.
TML: From where are you going to pull the students, and how many students do you anticipate the first year?
Dajani: We would like to pull students from the Palestinian community. Also, there are Israeli students that are welcome and there are international students that are welcome; maybe some German students and so it is open. We are open to recruit twenty students in the first year.
TML: The environment is very toxic. Is it not very difficult to get Palestinians to come, let alone learn about reconciliation, but even beyond that, to get Israelis to come sit with them? How will you be able to accomplish that?
Dajani: We’ll wait and see. I believe in education. I believe this is the role of the universities to help build bridges and not walls. Walls are separation. That’s why I believe the university is a place where all these ideas can clash and one can talk about them civilly. Dialogue can be the methodology to be used and that’s why I believe that if we leave politics outside and allow education to take over, then we can achieve what we want to achieve.
TML: There is a lot of irrationality in the environment. The issue of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel exists, so how will you be able to work against that?
Dajani: I don’t believe in anti-normalization because I believe we need to empower the peace loving Israelis and the Israeli community. We need to also empower the peace activists within the Palestinian community. We have to have dialogue between them. We have to have bridges between them so that they can find the common ground between them. And I think the rest can do a very good job in that.
TML: Professor Dajani, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask: you took Palestinian students to Auschwitz to a great deal of negativity and now you’re again embarking on something that’s never been done…you had your car torched just a week ago. How do you know that you aren’t going to encounter more reactions like that?
Dajani: Well, if we keep the negative thoughts in our mind, we will never achieve anything. We need to move on and the caravan should continue on its way and whoever wants to join can join; and whoever does not, let them not come on. We are not obliging anybody to follow our position or our road or to take the same road we are taking, but what we would like is to have them allow us also to have the freedom to express ourselves. We don’t have to agree, but we have to have respect.
TML: You said earlier that there are other Muslims that believe as you do, and the world is claiming that they are not seeing enough people like you coming out; that they are afraid. Can you pinpoint some of the people out there that are vocal, that are talking about moderation, that are talking about reconciliation?
Dajani: Actually, I was just in Rome where I was attending a conference at the Pontifical Urbaniana University about teaching the religion of the other and there were more than two hundred scholars in that room who believe the way I believe. That’s why I’m optimistic. People are afraid to speak out because radicals try to use violence against them. Some speak out and some don’t, but that doesn’t mean it is not in their heart, it is not in their mind. Once we stand up to the radicals and are no longer the bystanders, then I think that others would join in. But if I say that I’m afraid and he says that he’s afraid – “Let others do it!” — then we will never do it. Somebody has to stand up and not be a bystander and in this way others will follow and have the courage to speak out. We would like to see those voices be louder and louder.
TML: Professor Dajani, how did you get to this point? How did you get to this end?
Dajani: Well, I was born in Jerusalem, actually in a neighborhood not very far from here and was raised in the Old City. Then I studied with the Quakers and my Ramallah friends for twelve years. I think the Quaker theology has affected me a lot. However, in 1967, it was time for radicalism and I became a radical student at the American University in Beirut and joined Fatah. Between ’67 and ’75, I remained the radical young Palestinian student activist. However, in 1975, I decided to divorce politics and marry the academy and study much more than politics. Since then I earned two PhD’s and taught in many universities. I settled in Jordan for many years and then was allowed to come back to Jerusalem in 1993. My father was able to reunite our family because at the time, I used to accompany him to Hadassah Hospital at EinKarem where he would go for cancer chemotherapy. My impression in the beginning was that he would be treated like an Arab — like a Muslim, like a Palestinian — but then I found out that he was treated like a patient. It affected me in my perception of others. Then I started to look at the other from the human side.
Also, I had an experience with my mother in which we (joined her) on a Friday afternoon. She asked us if we (me, my brother and my niece), can drive her to Tel Aviv for dinner. Afterward, while walking on the beach she suffered an asthmatic attack and found her inhalers were empty. Pharmacies were closed for Shabbat so we decided to drive to drive her back to Jerusalem. On the way the asthma became a heart attack and she fainted. When we arrived at the gate (of the hospital) and informed the soldiers and the security people that we have a patient with us, they immediately vacated a part of the entrance and called for medical help.
For more than an hour the team of doctors and nurses were trying to resuscitate my mother. They decided to take her to a nearby military hospital, but she died on the way. When we got there they didn’t speak to us for more than two hours because they were afraid of our reaction that we would accuse them of killing her. After awhile, we were informed that she died on the way to the hospital and so we drove back to Jerusalem without her since they couldn’t provide an ambulance to take her back because it was Shabbat.
And so, I was looking at her empty chair and thinking first, how life is fragile and second, how much we miss her and how much we love her. But also in my mind was my enemy who tried to save my mother. And so in this way I believe it was a very clear message for me that we can live together in peace and we can actually be able to create a community where you can have your state and I can have my state and in this way we can live in cooperation and mutual understanding rather than in conflict and killing each other. It is what I call the “big dream, small hope,” where the big dream for an Israeli is to wake up one morning and there are no Palestinians around and to have Yerushalayim [Jerusalem] as the capital and build the Temple on Moriah – the mountain. At the same time, the big dream of the Palestinians is to wake up one morning and there are no Jews. But the small hope is for each of them to learn to wake up and there are two communities living in peace and cooperation, like what happened with France and Germany and many other communities which were in conflict such as in Ireland, Cambodia, Rwanda and different parts of the world. That is our responsibility for our children and grandchildren. We inherited conflict and hate and enmity. We should not let them inherit that. Maybe we should work so that they should grow up in a peaceful environment where they can learn, get an education and work and live a normal life without fear and insecurity.
TML: Professor Dajani, what you are preaching is something that many Palestinians and Israelis would like to see, but I don’t want to burst your bubble, today Israelis and Palestinians do not shop in each other’s shops, they don’t know each other the same way that you had that opportunity many years ago. So how do you change the vision of each other for the youth today to understand what you just spoke about?
Dajani: That’s why we’re doing and building a culture of moderation, of wasatia, and it is my belief if the Israelis look at the Palestinian community and see a moderate nation and see people living in peace and see that there aren’t these voices of terror and extremism and radicalism…and at the same time if the Palestinians would look at the Israeli community and see a peaceful society, where there is no agitation or incitement against the other…I think if we can undermine those negative forces and build up empowerment for the forces of peace and the forces of reconciliation, and acceptance of the other…I believe that this will bring hope. If you look at me and see a human being and I look at you and see a human being, it is different than if we look at each other and demonize each other or if we look at each other and see a stereotypical image of the other. That’s why we have to do more on the people-to-people level, and try to undermine what is happening by a minority — whether on your side or our side. This is where I believe the more we can stand up to end the circle of violence and show empathy for the other…and that was the purpose of our visit to Auschwitz. It was actually to allow the Palestinians to look at the Israelis and as Jews in a different perspective. It was the same thing when we took Israelis to Palestinian refugee camps. We wanted them to hear the story of the Palestinians and we want the Palestinians to hear the story of the Jews. In this way they can acknowledge each other and understand each other and have empathy for each other. Once they do that, then we create the environment where we can achieve peace. You start with creating a culture of moderation, and then through moderation you create trust and respect for the narrative of the other, and so you engage in working on reconciliation which would facilitate negotiating in good faith and from there you go on to peace and democracy. That’s why we call for reconciliation in the midst of strife, in the midst of conflict. I do not believe we have to wait until the conflict is over in order to do reconciliation. I believe if we do reconciliation today, now, then it paves the way for an end of conflict.
The Media Line is an American news agency specializing in the Middle East. Felice Friedson can be reached at editor@themedialine.org [3].