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From The Electronic Intifada:

There is a lot to say about Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the Lebanese Shia Muslim cleric who passed away on 4 July 2010 at the age of 75. Unfortunately, much of what there is to say is being left unsaid for more of the same sensationalist reporting on this region and its people.

Fadlallah was a progressive Shia cleric, known for his defense of armed resistance and women’s rights. He was outspoken against Israel’s 22 year occupation of south Lebanon and cheered attacks against it. In 1985 the CIA is thought to have been behind a massive car bomb that attempted to take his life — it missed the Ayatollah killing 80 other Lebanese civilians and injured hundreds more. However, his support for resistance didn’t end with the Israeli invaders; Ayatollah Fadlallah also said that women have the right to use violence to resist domestic abuse.

The day after his death, Nasawiya, a feminist collective in Lebanon, wrote a post on Facebook telling Fadlallah: “Your feminist voice will be missed.” The post linked to an obituary by journalist Zeinab Yaghi writing in Arabic for the Lebanese daily As-Safir where she wrote of Fadlallah: “Women used to see him as a father” and that he “encouraged women to work.”

He was a leader for many Shia Muslims in Lebanon and elsewhere around the world. In Lebanon, a country divided along strict sectarian lines, he was a truly unique religious figure for the respect that he garnered from people of other faiths and the secular alike.

Most headlines in English-language media outlets have wrongly linked Fadlallah to Hizballah, the Shia Islamic resistance and political group in Lebanon. It is said that Fadlallah influenced some of Hizballah’s founders along with numerous other young Shias in the years leading up to and during Hizballah’s formation in the early 1980s. But in Lebanon it is widely known that, despite their mutual respect for each other, Fadlallah and Hizballah did not work together and even disagreed on many issues. Some of these fundamental differences stem from Hizballah’s close relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran, whereas Fadlallah had long opposed the Ayatollah Khomeini-inspired clerical leadership of the country after its 1979 revolution.

This intentional mistake of linking Fadlallah to Hizballah should come as little surprise from a media that too often chooses sensationalism over accuracy when covering Lebanon and the region. As a journalist and photographer working in Lebanon, I know that European and US media are rarely interested in political or religious topics when the focus is not Hizballah. Ayatollah Fadlallah’s importance had little to do with Hizballah, and that was clear on 6 July 2010 when hundreds of thousands took to the streets to mourn his death.

Breaking from this sensationalist coverage was a blog post on the British government’s website by Frances Guy, the British ambassador in Lebanon (whose positions I’ve criticized in the past), which contained the following:

“The world needs more men like [Fadlallah] willing to reach out across faiths, acknowledging the reality of the modern world and daring to confront old constraints. May he rest in peace. ”

It was a very kind tribute to a religious leader based on Guy’s experience learning about Fadlallah and meeting him in Beirut. She even succeeded in not mentioning “Hizballah” once. I would happily link to the post had it not been removed “after mature consideration” by the UK Foreign Office who thought that Guy was being a bit too laudatory of a person who died under the “Hizballah leader” headlines. (Fortunately, what goes on the web stays on the web and you can find her post cached here.) Guy later wrote a new post expressing regret for ever writing the tribute:

“I have no truck with terrorism wherever it is committed in whoever’s name. The British Government has been clear that it condemns terrorist activity carried out by Hizballah. I share that view.”

Similar to Guy, Octavia Nasr, CNN’s senior editor of Mideast affairs, also offered her admiration for Fadlallah after his death over the social networking site Twitter:

“Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.. One of Hizballah’s giants I respect a lot.”

Nasr, a Lebanese-American journalist who has worked with CNN for 20 years, later wrote an article regretting her tweet which was then removed; in her article she was sure to remind us which side she is on, using the words “terror” or terrorist” five times. I’ve followed her work with CNN and know that her reporting would hardly upset anyone in any recent US administration. Yet the one time she does, she loses her job as a result.

These blatant acts of censorship by western governments and media prove that showing an accurate or nuanced picture of the Middle East is not high on their agendas. After all, an accurate picture would show that western-waged and backed wars in this region are far from just, and therefore it’s easy to understand how resistance to them is widely supported. Not only did Fadlallah support resistance, but he also challenged the stereotype many have in the west of Islam as a religion intolerant of women’s rights.

Fadlallah was a leader that anyone even slightly familiar with this region could easily respect. The censored coverage of his passing in the west proves the complicity of our media with our government’s deadly and oppressive policies in the Middle East.
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More pictures from Fadlallah’s funeral:

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Theresa Seda (on the right in sleevless shirt) with two of her sisters at their family's home in the Philippines two years before she came to work in Lebanon. (Photo courtesy of the Seda family)

For anyone in Lebanon, witnessing the mistreatment of foreign domestic workers is unavoidable. With more than 200,000 foreign women working in the country, many Lebanese families hire live-in maids to take care of household duties. These women, excluded from Lebanon’s labor law, are often overworked, their wages withheld, and are subject to sexual, physical and psychological abuse.

Despite this, and after more than two years in Beirut covering the consequences of war and politics in the region, I was not involved in the issue. However, after 4 January 2010, the choice to remain silent was no longer an option.

On that day, as I worked from my home in Beirut, a crowd gathered in the street below around the body of a Filipino woman who had fallen from the seventh floor balcony of her employer’s home. Theresa Seda was 28 years old and had lived in Lebanon for only two months after leaving the Philippines in search of work so that she could provide her three young children with an education. As her body lay in the street for hours before medical workers arrived, I described the scene on my website and posted pictures. Later that day I was contacted by her sister living in Europe. Theresa’s sister provided text messages sent by her sister before her death that showed Theresa faced both physical and psychological abuse by her employers and was denied even the slightest break away from her work.

It was Theresa’s death that made me first pick up my camera to highlight the abuse of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon — I have not put it down since.

Titled “Unseen Lives,” this body of photographs shows a glimpse into the lives of Ethiopian, Sri Lankan, Filipino, Madagascan, Nigerian, Nepalese, and women of other nationalities employed as domestic workers in Lebanon. However, this work is in no way an accurate representation of the general situation in which most migrant domestic workers are living. With many workers literally locked away inside their employers’ homes, photographing them is impossible. These photographs document the lives and culture of many foreign women working in Lebanon to show their strength in overcoming the many hardships they’re forced to contend with.

This project was done in partnership with the Lebanese nongovernmental organization KAFA (enough) Violence & Exploitation.

A slideshow of the exhibit:

Unseen Lives: Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon – Images by Matthew Cassel

Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to see what I did when I opened my computer at 8:00 am on Monday.

The video was chilling. Masked and armed Israeli soldiers — or “commandos” as they’re described to perhaps conjure up images of G.I. Joe action figures — descended from helicopters one by one on board the Mavi Marmara and Israeli warships flanked the vessel on all sides as it sailed in international waters. As anyone would expect, the startled activists resisted the attack with sticks and whatever else they could find on deck. The Israeli soldiers opened fire and dozens of activists were killed and injured. More than two days later, Israel has yet to release the names or even the total number of dead leaving those of us with friends and loved ones who were on board the ship in a constant state of worry.

Protests have been held around the world against Israel’s attacks and in support of Palestinians under siege and occupation in Gaza. In Beirut on Tuesday, dozens of different organizations and political parties took part in one of the most diverse protests I’ve witnessed in three years of living here. Because of the role Turkish organizations played in organizing the Flotilla combined with Prime Minister Tayyip Erodogan’s strong words against Israel’s attacks on the ships and its siege on Gaza, support for Turkey is incredibly high across the Arab world. Many in Beirut carried Turkish flags and signs in support of the Erodogan government.

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Fore more:

International solidarity and the Freedom Flotilla massacre (The Electronic Intifada)
Glenn Greenwald talks about Israel with Eliot Spitzer on MSNBC (Salon)
Cartoonist Steve Bell on Israel’s attack (Guardian)

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There was a beauty pageant on Sunday, in fact there was more than one. But those of you reading this post probably only heard about one. In Las Vegas, 51 women competed for the Miss USA award. In the end, Rima Fakih, a Lebanese woman who immigrated to the US as a child took home the prize.

I’ve never paid much attention to such awards which I feel promote sexist ideas about women and a shallow definition of “beauty.” Had this year’s Miss USA not been a Lebanese-American, I probably wouldn’t have even heard about the award on Monday morning when I opened my computer in Beirut. I had known about a completely different beauty pageant that took place on Sunday.

As part of my ongoing photo project documenting the lives of foreign domestic workers in Lebanon, I attended my first ever beauty pageant. However, this one was not in Las Vegas, but in the working class Ouzai district of Dahiyeh, Beirut’s southern suburbs. There 11 Ethiopian women, all who came to Lebanon in past years in search of work, held their own beauty pageant that closely resembled the Donald Trump owned Miss USA pageant.

The contestants had been preparing for months. Coming together each Sunday (their only day off), they practiced everything from walking in high heels to smiling for the cameras. On Sunday they wore a number of different outfits including traditional Ethiopian clothes, swimsuits and evening gowns, as they strutted up and down the catwalk in front of four Lebanese judges and dozens of cheering spectators, mostly other Ethiopian women working in Lebanon.

One of the event’s emcees, a Nigerian man working in Lebanon, made it clear that the competition was not merely to celebrate the most “beautiful” Ethiopian woman in Lebanon, but to present a different image of Ethiopian women in a country where they face daily discrimination.

After almost four hours of intense competition and a brief Q&A session where contestants were asked about Ethiopian and Lebanese culture, one woman* who works at a health club in Beirut was crowned Miss Ethiopia in Lebanon.

*To protect their identities all women are kept anonymous.

Getting ready backstage (image: matthew cassel)

Getting ready backstage (image: matthew cassel)

Preparing Ethiopian coffee (image: matthew cassel)

Round 1: Contestants dress in the same outfit which resembles the Ethiopian flag (image: matthew cassel)

Round 2: Traditional wear (image: matthew cassel)

In between rounds, a woman performs traditional Ethiopian dance (image: matthew cassel)

Preparing for round 3 (image: matthew cassel)

Round 3: The swimsuit competition (image: matthew cassel)l

Putting on the finishing touches for the final round (image: matthew cassel)

Round 4: The evening gown (image: matthew cassel)

The Q&A session (image: matthew cassel)

Miss Ethiopia poses for with the other 10 contestants (image: matthew cassel)

Tehran, where Danny Postel is not writing from (image: matthew cassel)

After publishing my article “An American in Tehran” in In These Times, one commentator named Danny Postel wrote a critical response from Chicago and brought in a bunch of his friends to support his positions. One of his friends even dismisses my article as “propaganda” and a “sham.”

In a strange move for most publications, the popular Tehran Bureau website, which calls itself “an independent source of news on Iran and the Iranian diaspora” and has a partnership with the American Public Broadcasting Service, republished Postel’s already published response to an article on a completely different site. Postel’s response, which Tehran Bureau editors cleverly titled “Pretzel Logic on the American Left,” is a few hundred words longer than my original piece. One would think it only fair that Tehran Bureau then give me the space to respond, however, after an initial email exchange weeks ago where I asked to be given the chance to defend myself I’m still waiting to hear back. Unfortunately, it seems that few outside Iran are willing to take part in a discussion around the diverse “Green Movement” if it means portraying individual activists as anything other than “Gandhiesque.”

I’m pasting the text of my response which you can also find published below Postel’s response in In These Times here.

Contrary to Danny Postel’s claims, I did not intend to portray the Basij or Ahmadinejad government in a sympathetic light. Rather, my aim was to lend nuance to a complex reality in Iran that has been oversimplified by nearly all media outlets in the United States, from Fox News to commentators like Postel.

Unlike Postel, I do not attempt to make sweeping generalizations about the ideology of a diverse opposition movement that includes Iranians from all walks of life. Nor would I ever attempt to make such generalizations from the other side of the globe. I traveled to Iran to gain a better understanding of what was happening there.

Perhaps from my hometown Chicago, where Postel writes from and which I left years ago — knowing that I couldn’t accurately cover the Middle East without actually being here — I might share his naive assessment of the situation. But the fact is, on the ground in Tehran, I found a reality that doesn’t coincide with Postel’s illusions.

The majority of the opposition activists with whom I spoke seemed to not be as concerned with this idea of “nonviolence” as Postel and his friend from Columbia University. To impose this label upon them is absurd and offensive to those activists who don’t necessarily agree that the only justifiable form of resistance is one of “nonviolence.” Most activists I met were angry and ready to fight. One woman even expressed how she wishes Hezbollah (which she wholeheartedly supports) didn’t have such a close relationship with her government so that she could return to Lebanon with me and be trained in guerrilla warfare to use against the state.

Another activist, who expressed sympathies for the former Shah, told me a story about how her and her friends had to dive on top of a friend from South America during the June 2009 protests to protect him from dozens of raging opposition protesters who attacked him chanting “Basiji” just because of — as she explained it — his darker skin and beard. Such events prove the tremendous diversity in political and tactical strategy among the protesters.

To pretend that there is one ideology that unites the opposition couldn’t be further from the truth. This, along with the massive pro-government rallies since the elections that I pointed out and which Postel conveniently omits in his critique, are exactly why I conclude that what’s happening in Iran is not necessarily the makings of a new revolution.

Last year’s controversial elections have, however, sparked a new wave of political activity in Iran, and because of the sensitivity of the situation my sources all asked to remain anonymous. My article in no way apologizes for the Iranian government’s brutal repression of opposition activists. Postel, on the other hand, apologizing for Mousavi’s role as prime minister in the 1980s, shows the utter hypocrisy of many on the “left” who are no less guilty than the right for trying to prevent a more realistic portrayal of what’s happening in Iran from reaching people in the United States.

By far my favorite chant from yesterday was, “shoo taiftak? ma khasak!” (“What’s your sect? None of your business!”)

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Tehran. (image: matthew cassel)

An American in Tehran
The ‘Green Revolution’ won’t come as soon as we think it will.
by Matthew Cassel
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5736/

I awoke as the plane’s wheels touched the ground. Two women in the row ahead of me secured their scarves over their heads, and I popped some gum into my mouth to cover up any lingering scent of alcohol on my breath. Pulling up to the gate, I glimpsed the red, white and green flags with the distinctive “Allah” logo in the middle, welcoming me—I hoped—to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I was going to Iran in the midst of ongoing protests that began following last June’s contentious presidential elections. As an American journalist who has worked in the region for years, I was invited to give a talk at a media conference on the Western media’s coverage of the Middle East. …

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Before yesterday, many Ethiopian friends who I’ve come to know recently through a photography project I’m working on documenting the lives of foreign domestic workers in Lebanon found it hard to believe that their country’s top musical icon would perform in Beirut.

One male Ethiopian friend who manages a shop and is savvy about Lebanese culture called him Ethiopia’s George Wassouf, while most Ethiopian women who I’ve talked to said he is their country’s Michael Jackson.

In the decades that foreign women from outside the Arab world have come to work in Lebanon, this is the first time that a major Ethiopian pop star has performed here. With tens of thousands of Ethiopian women currently working in Lebanon, the Lebanese promoter who brought Teddy knew that he could bring out a crowd. For the past few weeks, posters in both Amharic and English have gone up across the city and not one Ethiopian who I’ve talked to was unaware that the concert was happening.

Even though many women are not allowed a day off by their employers, and with tickets at $40 a pop (around 25% of an average monthly salary for an Ethiopian domestic worker), thousands of Ethiopian women, along with a few handfuls of their Lebanese employers, boyfriends and others made it to see Teddy.

It felt like I boarded a plane and flew somewhere far away from Lebanon when I arrived at the Sports City concert hall near central Beirut yesterday afternoon. Apart from the Lebanese attendees, security and concert organizers, there were few non-black faces lining up outside. Women were dressed in T-shirts with images of Teddy Afro, Bob Marley, Haile Selassie and other designs celebrating Ethiopian and African culture.

For the few police officers checking bags at the door, there would be no whistling, flirting, or any other kind of harassment like I’ve seen and heard happen often in Beirut. Yesterday, the authority was greatly outnumbered. Thousands of Ethiopian women passed them one by one, walking all over the boys in black and white camouflage. Nothing was going to stop these workers from celebrating the place that they’ve had to leave in search of a better life.

The concert began at around 4:30pm, and until it ended nearly four hours later, the ground underneath Sports City shook to the dance steps of nearly everyone in the arena, including this white American photographer. Another American who has long lived in Lebanon, told me that the concert was the best event he’s ever been to in Lebanon, right alongside celebrations in the south in 2000 after Israel withdrew nearly all of its 22 year long occupation.

If it felt like Liberation Day for many of these Ethiopian workers who have been subject to exploitation and abuse over the years, it was only temporary. Today, the women return to their lives inside of families’ homes no doubt thinking back to those few hours yesterday evening.

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While at the same time the demand for foreign workers is growing and so are the number of cases dealing with their abuse by employers and detention by the authorities. Some, however, are taking a stand.

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