An emotional meeting

Gulf Daily News Thursday, 22nd January 2015
By the way...
REEM ANTOON
Terror is terror!
W
n Policemen and forensic police
work in a marked up perimetre in
Colline street in Verviers, Belgium,
after two men were reportedly killed
during an anti-terrorist operation
enough, the government girls’ schools are not
having the same problem and girls are out
performing the boys on every level because
in those schools, most of the teachers are
Bahrainis.
Salary-wise I guess it’s not attractive
enough for Bahraini male teachers. Despite
long holidays, as it is the case worldwide,
teachers take care and spend seven hours a
day with our children and are instrumental in
Safety priority...
T is good news that
Iflight's
the AirAsia 8501
two flight
E live in an increasingly
troubled world where violence and terror are widespread
across all borders.
Perpetrators of violence deem
it justified in order to serve their
own agendas, irrespective of
whichever faith they (supposedly) adhere to.
Yet, the media’s use of language like “Islamist terrorist
cell”, “suspected Islamists” or
“Islamist attacks” (‘Belgium deploys troops’, GDN, January18)
is at best blatantly biased and
grossly prejudiced and orientalist.
It could certainly have Edward
Said turning in his grave! These
terrorists are no more ‘Islamist’
than the Ukrainian fighters are
Christian, yet we – the readers – are constantly subjected
to biased language which is
grossly misrepresentative of the
Islamic faith.
The religion of ALL terrorists
is ‘terrorism’, irrespective of
whichever religion they claim to
follow.
As a linguist, I feel compelled
to highlight this issue of lexical
selection.
Mobeena Inam
forming our future generations.
We should be grateful and supportive to
them, and a better salary will encourage more
qualified Bahrainis to choose this career.
Jameela Mohanna
n Indonesian soldiers carry a
coffin recovered by divers from
the crash site of AirAsia flight in
Java sea, on arrival at Surabaya
airport
recorders and a tail
section have been
found and brought to
shore.
Hopefully, the
cause of the crash
will be ascertained
expeditiously.
With increasing
low-price flights
operating across the
world to cater to the
growing market of
travellers, it is important to ensure that
safety training and
pilot competences
are maintained at the
highest levels.
Rajendra K Aneja
2003 - The French and
1998 – American solGerman governments
diers arrest their first
issue a joint statement
war-crimes suspect in
Bosnia, grabbing forPRAISE undeserved is satire in dis- expressing their opmer detention camp
guise – Henry Broadhurst, English pol- position to immediate
military action against
commander
Goran
itician (1840-1911).
Iraq.
Jelisic off a street in Bi2004 – Ranchers
jeljina.
blocked a main road
1999 – The Romanian
in Western Brazil to protest what they said were thougovernment makes a deal with striking coal miners
sands of squatters on their land. Some 3,000 Guarani
who had injured hundreds of riot police during days
and Kaiowa Indians have been defying a judge’s order
of street battles, averting a threatened march on the
to abandon 14 ranches they had occupied in recent
capital.
weeks to press their claims for ancestral lands.
2000 – An International Atomic Energy Agency team
2005 - Iran’s hard-line leadership rules out allowing
begins searching Iraqi nuclear sites in the first inspecwomen to run for president in June elections, denying
tion by a world body in more than a year. Their job is to
reports in the state-run media that it had decided to almake sure Iraq’s nuclear stocks are not used for military
low female candidates for the first time.
purposes.
2006 - Pakistan’s prime minister condemns an Ameri2001 – Former US football player Rae Carruth is sencan airstrike on a remote Pakistani village, saying such
tenced to at least 18 years and 11 months in prison
attacks should be cleared with Islamabad first.
for his role in the 1999 shooting death of his pregnant
2007 - A suicide bomber crashes his car into a central
girlfriend.
Baghdad market crowded with Shi’ites just seconds
2002 - China moves 17,000 mostly Chinese and Muslim
after another car bomb tears through the stalls where
settlers to a traditionally Tibetan region in its remote
vendors were hawking DVDs and used clothing, leaving
west, reviving a plan abandoned after protests by crit88 dead in one of the bloodiest attacks of the Iraq war.
ics of China’s Tibetan policies.
2008 - Iraq’s parliament passes a law to change the
Saddam Hussein-era flag.
2009 - A Chinese court sentences two men to death and
a dairy boss to life in prison for their roles in producing
and selling infant formula tainted with melamine.
2010 - Britain raises its terror threat alert to the second-highest level, one of several recent moves the
country has made to increase vigilance against international terrorists after a Christmas Day bombing attempt
on a Europe-US flight.
2011 - The collapse of another attempt at international
outreach to Iran leaves world powers with few options
except to wait – and hope that the bite of sanctions will
persuade Tehran to reconsider its refusal to stop activities that could be harnessed to make nuclear weapons.
2012 - Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh leaves
his battered nation on his way to the US for medical
treatment after passing power to his deputy and asking for forgiveness for any “shortcomings” during his
33-year reign.
2013 - Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party emerges as the largest faction in a hotly contested parliamentary election, positioning the hard-liner to serve a new term as prime minister.
2014 - Syrian peace talks begin in Switzerland with a
bitter clash over President Bashar Al Assad’s future.
An emotional
meeting...
P
ope Francis’s last full day in the
Philippines earlier this week, began
with an emotional youth gathering
at a Catholic university in Manila, where
he was moved by a question posed by
a 12-year-old girl who had been abandoned.
“Many children are abandoned by
their parents. Many of them became
victims and bad things have happened
to them, like drug addiction and prostitution. Why does God allow this to
happen, even if the children are not at
fault? Why is it that only a few people
help us?” Glyzelle Iris Palomar asked.
The girl, who herself was rescued and
found shelter in a church-run community, broke down in tears and could not
finish her prepared welcome. The pope
hugged her and later put aside most of
his own prepared speech to respond.
I myself had often asked that question in my younger years and I haven't
really stopped asking it in my adulthood
either. And I am still waiting for a viable
answer.
It is, to be fair, one of the most difficult
questions for anyone to answer. And I
am sure it is asked by almost every believer once or twice in their lifetime.
How, we ask ourselves, can a God of love
permit such things in the world? Things
like war, sickness, pain and death, especially when their effects often are felt
most keenly by those who are apparently innocent?
Of all human suffering, none, I believe,
can equal the pain of a mother (and
father) who must put their young child
into a grave.
In answer to the youngster’s question
the Pope replied: “Why do children suffer? I invite each one of you to ask yourselves, ‘Have I learned how to weep ...
when I see a hungry child, a child on the
street who uses drugs, a homeless child,
an abandoned child, an abused child, a
child that society uses as a slave’'?”
Tragedies involving little children,
such as the plight of starving Ethiopian
and other African children, their little
bodies emaciated, diseased and dying,
their bellies bloated are never easy to
take in.
But I think before we blame God for
the multitude of terrible, heartrending
tragedies afflicting little children and
people worldwide, we need to stop and
take a look at ourselves.
Is God totally to blame? Shall we
humans assume no responsibilities?
Does he have a part to play in these
tragedies?
Philosophers, psychologists, theologians, scientists and agnostics, have all
puzzled over these questions.
There is a human responsibility involved even before a baby is born. After
birth, parents have an even greater duty
to teach, protect and watch over their
children.
The more we open our minds and
the deeper we search for understanding about why little children suffer,
disappear or die, and why people have
suffered terrible evils throughout history, the more we must acknowledge the
human responsibility involved.
And as Albert Einstein once said, “the
world as we have created it is a process
of our thinking. It cannot be changed
without changing our thinking.”
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