Three years after the death of Rachel Corrie, this writer reiterates two questions he initially posed to Captain James Yee at an event dedicated to Rachel Corrie and attended by Cindy and Craig Corrie:
Question 1
“After the Vietnam War, many of us absorbed Buddhist ideas ... Where might we find comparable beginnings of a Christian-Muslim dialog?”
Question 2
“Many of us are intrigued by Sufism and feel it may represent a mystic core of Islam...
Honoring Rachel Corrie Three Years Later: Two Questions for Peace Activists
Rachel Corrie died three years ago on March 16 2003. Some thoughts for peacemakers.
Honoring Rachel Corrie Three Years Later: Two Questions for the Peace Movement
by Jeremy Ellington
Three years after Rachel Corrie's death, the horrors of war have increased exponentially with no end in sight.
Iraq totters on the brink of civil war.
We've seen more insane executions of humanitarian aid workers and peacemakers.
Iran seems to be on the brink of developing the atom bomb. Pakistan and India and China are in a three way arms race.
Dutch film maker Theo Van Gogh was executed for criticizing Islam. Muslims were killed in riots over nothing more than an ignorant cartoon in a tiny newspaper that no oner ever heard of. A Jew,.brutally tortured in France in an act of collective revenge hot on the heels of nation wide riots .
It seems that if Rachel is looking down on all of this she might say: what did I die for? For this? Was anyone paying attention?
And I would add: is anyone paying attention to the peacemakers? Is anyone paying attention to the words of Martin Luther King, Mohandas Ghandi, Jesus, Mohammed, Gibran, Rumi? We stopped the blood shed in Vietnam. Where are the Daniel Ellsbergs and the Benjamin Spocks and the David Dellingers this time around? We had a Buddhist-Christian dialogue come out of our Vietnam experience. I don't see that happening now.
Overcoming Mistrust, Fear and Hatred
When Rachel Corrie first went to Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement, there was resistance from the locals, and it was not entirely noble – mistrust is never pretty. But she overcame that resistance with the intensity of her conviction for justice. And if much of Islamic mistrust of peace activists is less than high minded, that does not mean that high minded efforts to make peace will inevitably fail.
Albert Einstein, in his letter to Mohandas Ghandi, correctly pointed out that the Mohatma established the effectiveness of non violence as a tool for political struggle even in a context wherein other people continue to behave violently. And so it is that we continue to remember Rachel Corrie despite the fact that she was not perfect and that she did make some embarrassing political mistakes in the fire her youth.
James Yee, Fighter for Peace and Justice
Near Olympia, Washington I attended an event which was dedicated to Rachel and which her parents attended. I addressed two important questions to the guest of honor James Yee and I would like to re-address them to the peace community at large. Ironically, I floated the first draft of this article on Monday, and last night I heard that tCaptain Yee made national news. lamenting the failure of the U.S. Government to work with Muslims to address conflict resolution between America and the Islamic world. I wholeheartedly concur with him.
Former U.S. Army Captain James Yusef Yee was deployed at Guantanamo in the capacity of chaplain to the detainees and in that capacity he innocently, if naively, notified family members of the prisoners of the welfare of their captive sons and brothers. For this act of charity he spent seven months under courts martial, seventy six days of it in solitary confinement and shackled, to boot. This kind of treatment of a U.S. Citizen and an officer in the U.S. Army is unconscionable, and to date the government has not made amends for this misdeed although it did drop all charges a year ago today.
The Bill of Rights Defense Committee sponsored the event, and presented Yee with a plank from Tacoma, Washington's old Japanese Language School. During World War II they were closed down when students and their parents were subject to the internment which has rankled so many commentators. Many believe that Captain Yee was victimized by “the same kind of race based hysteria triggered by a national crisis.”
When the question and answer time came, one person after another assailed Captain Yee with pointed barbs about the violence and misogyny of Islam. This was quite puzzling to me, as these were people I thought of as peace activists, yet they seemed to be stereotyping Muslims.
When my turn came, I posed two questions. I think they are worth repeating, as they go to heart of establishing a sustainable foundation not just for ending war but moving forward on a planet where Muslims and non-Muslims can co-exist. Here the questions are, verbatim:
Question 1
“After the Vietnam War, many of us absorbed Buddhist ideas and some of us even adopted Buddhism as our own personal philosophies. An ongoing Christian – Buddhist dialog has been established. Where might we find comparable beginnings of a Christian-Muslim dialog?”
Question 2
“Many of us are intrigued by Sufism and feel it may represent a mystic core of Islam which dovetails with Christian contemplative traditions and the experiences shared by writers such as Thomas Merton. Can you tell us something of the role and status of Sufism is Islam today, and how it might relate to peacemaking and conflict resolution?”
I didn't make any New Year's resolutions this January, but now, as the anniversary of Rachel's sacrifice and the Iraq war approaches, I resolved to seek answers to those two questions which I put to Yee. And I have found confirmation of my faith that the elaboration of the answers – delving into Sufism – would in and of itself create tangible peace. Not only that, but, due to the history of Sufism asserting itself against often hostile caliphs, I have found that tradition has much also to say regarding the question of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. But the articulation of that answer is a project better left to another day, and, if the reader hungers for it, they will find in its denoument resolution of many things.
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