Grassroots U.S.-Saudi efforts to heal Sept 11 wounds

EDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AFP) - Some Saudis and Americans are taking modest steps to ease the divide left by the September 11 attacks on the United States, which were mostly carried out by Saudi nationals.

Dressed in traditional female Saudi robes with her platinium blond hair tucked under a black veil, the daughter of one of the victims said she wants her fellow Americans to stop blaming Saudi Arabia for the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington which left almost 3,000 dead.

"My goal is to learn more, speak to people and let them hear what I feel and what I feel is that we have to respect each other, learn from each other and promote tolerance and understanding," said Sonia Tita Puopolo.

She is the only relative of a 9/11 victim to visit the kingdom since the attacks and was asked to speak at the Jeddah Economic Forum Monday during a session dedicated to terrorism.

A picture of her mother Sonia Morales Puopolo, a passenger on the American Airlines flight 11 that crashed into one of the towers of New York's World Trade Center, has been included in the forum's program.

"We should not focus on blame. I think it's time for people to move forward in the process of healing," said Puopolo.

U.S. university professor Gregory Payne, who accompanied Puopolo, said the only way to change misperceptions that Saudis and Americans have about each other is to reach out to the young and expose them to each other's cultures. One month after the attacks, he and Prince Faisal al-Abdullah al-Saud, a former student of his and a member of the Saudi royal family, started a program called the "Saudi American Exchange: Understanding through communication."

Since its inception the program has brought 600 university students from America on trips to Saudi Arabia to meet with other students and gain a better understanding of the changes taking place in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

"We need grassroots public diplomacy. This is the way you change opinions, you do not do it solely by going in with the Pentagon scenario," said Payne, who said he hopes to expand his program to other U.S. universities and bring Saudis to America.

Payne said he is constantly criticized for reaching out to the Saudis by some of his colleagues and people he meets in his travels in the United States.

"I have received negative comments about doing this like why are you doing that with them and why do you have that type of interaction with the Arabs."

A Saudi who studied in the United States on a Saudi government scholarship and was in New York at the time of the attacks, welcomed Payne's efforts.

"The extremists that we have now come beacuse they are unaware of what's happening, unaware of how the West is interacting with us, they think the West has an agenda for the Arab world and it's untrue," said Khalaf al-Khalaf, 30.

"What we preach here is that we are right and everybody is wrong and that's the wrong message."

Despite the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers of the four planes involved in September 11 were Saudi, many Saudis believe the attacks were a conspiracy by the West against Muslims or say they were justified because of America's bias towards Israel in the Middle East conflict.

Former U.S. vice president Al Gore, in Jeddah for the forum, called for better understanding between Saudis and Americans and said that in the aftermath of the attacks U.S. authorities singled out many Saudis and Arabs living in or visiting the United States as potential threats.

"We made mistakes because we were vulnerable. Lumping everyone who shares a set of characteristics together and showing a lack of respect is unacceptable," he said.

Islam's Religious Intolerance
By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 19, 2005

[The following statement by Dr. Ehrenfeld was read by Alyssa Lappen at the meeting on "Protection of Religious Sites and Prevention of the Use of Religion to Incite Terrorism/Violence" which took place at the U.N. Headquarters in New York on December 13th, 2005. Dr. Ehrenfeld was ill with pneumonia].

No churches or synagogues have been destroyed in Saudi Arabia since it was established in 1932 -because none are allowed. Those who want to establish churches "are, unfortunately, fanatics," according to the Saudi First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector General, Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, in an interview with the Associated Press on March 13, 2003. He concluded: "There are no churches - not in the past, the present or future...."

There is no declared Muslim state, which offers full civil rights to members of other religions. Many Christians work in Saudi Arabia, but they are not allowed to practice their religion in public because there is no religious freedom in Saudi Arabia. The State Department's report on Religious Freedom points out that the Saudis do "not always respect this right in practice and do not define this right in law."

snip

Moreover, in the 1990's, Christian religious services in the American Embassy were terminated at the Saudi government's request. And even websites devoted to other religions and to religious freedom and tolerance are blocked by the Saudi government.

And the Saudis not only oppress all other religions but actively promote an ideology of hate in their own country and abroad. Freedom House documented how the Saudi government is involved in propagating internationally a "religious ideology that explicitly promotes hate, intolerance, and other human rights violations, and in some cases violence, toward members of other religious groups, both Muslims and non-Muslims."

snip

However, radical Islamists adhere to medieval traditions and laws mandating the Jihad. According to the Dictionary of Islam: conquered by jihad, subjugated people are given three choices:

1) convert,
2) pay a head tax, or
3) die.

snip

To remedy the situation, the UN-as well as all other international organizations-should sanction all the countries that do not allow religious freedom and withdraw all membership privileges of all the countries that do not provide legal protection and equal rights to all their citizens.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=20581

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