Bin Laden’s death

Two public statements today reflected my own unease on hearing of Osama bin Laden’s death in Pakistan – neither of them were Barack Obama’s.  I was glad bin Laden had been found, but sorry that there seemed to be no official regret that he was killed rather than captured.

“Justice has been done”, says Obama.  For me, justice involves a fair trial.  And this necessitates a sincere attempt at a live arrest.  We don’t always manage this in Britain – I was on the recent march against deaths in police custody after Smiley Culture’s death.

Perhaps the celebrations in the USA have something to do with the popularity of the death penalty there – and the presumption that any bin Laden trial would have led to execution.

In the end we always have to talk and sort conflicts out the hard way – and eventually we’ll need to do this with those who support Al-Qaeda.  It’s not easy – the process is still under way in Northern Ireland.  We need to “be the change we want to see”, as Gandhi said.

Am I just naïvely squeamish?  Would an expensive and security-intensive trial have been impossible?  Did Nuremberg only work because the defendants were the vanquished?

The trials of those accused of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia have not yet finished – Ratko Mladic is still at large.  I cannot imagine the victims or the victims’ families building a future there without the bedrock of a meticulous judicial system and for the stories to be told.  As Canon David Porter says in his blog, we need to tell our stories, our histories, to each other – and renegotiate them in the re-telling, generation by generation.

The Muslim Council of Britain released this statement.

Few will mourn the reported death of Osama bin Laden, least of all Muslims. Many Muslims will reflect on the ten years that have passed in which our faith and our community have been seen through the prism of terrorism and security. The Muslim Council of Britain has consistently stood firm against terrorism and violence, and will continue to do so. His extremism has been responsible for the deaths of many people, including many Muslims around the world. The actions of his movement which have no basis in the teachings of Islam have led to the pursuit of unjust wars and untold suffering.

Today our thoughts must be with the families of all those who suffered in the terrorist attacks around the world as well as of thousands of innocent lives lost in the wars against terrorism. It is unfortunate that his assassination has deprived them of the opportunity to see him brought to justice in the court of law.

Al-Qaeda’s ability to sow discord and mistrust between Muslims and others has caused untold damage. We must restore our belief in human dignity and peace by ensuring that we stand firm against all forms of hatred, injustices and violence.

The Vatican released this via Fr Federico Lombardi, Director of the Holy See Press Office.

Osama bin Laden – as we all know – was gravely responsible for promoting division and hatred between peoples, causing the end of countless innocent lives, and of exploiting religions to this end.

Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of each and every one of us before God and before man, and hopes and commits himself so that no event be an opportunity for further growth of hatred, but for peace.

Ameen and amen to both of these.

South London or Staten Island? Rolling in the deep

This is so South London – lovely stuff – but actually it’s Staten Island, New York.  PS22′s website says

This website is PS22′s effort to promote the benefits of keeping the arts an integral part of the school curriculum.

Yes!

Ground Zero

Maybe it’s just a summertime news spike, but there’s been increasing coverage of the plans to build an Islamic community centre near the site of the former World Trade Centre in New York City, which was destroyed by terrorists on 9/11.

I welcome a lively public conversation – how else should we work out, together, what sort of city or world we want? – although this one seems to have polarised rather quickly between those who think it triumphalist of Muslims to build something like this near the Ground Zero site (for views on how near is ‘near’, see a recent Salon post), and those who make a distinction between (American) Muslims in general and the 9/11 terrorists in particular, and who want to retain the religious freedom so precious to passengers on the Mayflower in 1620.

The last time I was in Manhattan I stayed in Battery Park City, which was created from the excavation material from the building of the twin towers.  The Ground Zero site still looked, two and half years ago, very desolate.

Memorial to the Great Famine in New York City (photo: David Shankbone)

Between my hotel and the Hudson river there was something very different.  Even in mid-winter, the memorial to the C19th Irish Gorta Mór or Great Hunger, which commemorates a famine that took a million lives and prompted another million Irish people to emigrate, is a beautiful, contemplative place to come across.  It’s partly a patch of rural Ireland, with grasses, heather and stone walls, and partly a collection of quotations and thoughts on famine and on migration.  When it was created (2002), the intention was to add more, as further hunger crises occurred.

Of course there is no public memorial to the dead of the Gorta Mór in London, so far as I know – we were part of the problem, not part of the solution.

New Yorkers, and US citizens generally, will have to decide how they want to live together.  With the mid-term elections coming up, everyone seems to have an opinion, from Sarah Palin (“hallowed ground“) to the the President.  If new mosques or Islamic centres or schools are banned in lower Manhattan, what effect would that have?  Would anything else be banned?  How would Muslims, and maybe other groups, feel about it?  It seems that some of those who oppose the Islamic centre in Park Place think it runs counter to honouring those who died at the World Trade Centre – it’s an affront, it shows disrespect.  So what is needed to remember those who died on 9/11?  And what is needed to be able to reach some kind of consensus or acceptance of different views, in uncertain times, on the historical significance of the atrocities that day?  How do we live well locally when our neighbourhood includes the site of a wider conflict?  How do we carry that responsibility?

Northern Irish schools had difficulty agreeing a shared history syllabus and textbooks after the Good Friday agreement – but they’ve managed it.  Bosnia is still struggling to agree what version of history should be taught to children in school.  When I think back on conflicts I’ve been part of, I know my own re-telling of the story is very different from my antagonist’s – unless our differences have been worked through and acknowledged.  Painful stuff.

Without some agreement on the past, it’s hard to find a shared future.  It’s early days for New York City but I’m hoping it won’t want to be part of the problem, it’ll be part of the solution and show us how different kinds of people, even under difficult circumstances, can share our cities and our world.