[LCM Events] Fwd: invitation (New York) to meet Dr. Chibli Mallat Candidate forthe Lebanese Presidency

[bcoleman@MIT.EDU]

I would like to rsvp for the event.

Professor Beth Coleman

Quoting taweelh at aol.com:

> Some of you might be interested to attend!
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: West Side Hematology & Oncology, P.C. <westsidehemonc at att.net>
> To: 'Gabriel Sara' <westsidehemonc at att.net>; Nada Anid <Nadanid at aol.com>
> Sent: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 18:02:50 -0500
> Subject: invitation (New York) to meet Dr. Chibli Mallat Candidate 
> for the Lebanese Presidency, please read this email
>
>
> New York November 13, 2005
>
> Dear Friends,
> We would like to inform you of a unique opportunity to meet Human 
> rights activist and lawyer, Dr. Chibli Mallat who is running for the 
> presidential elections in Lebanon..
>
> We met him and were very impressed by his ideas, his convictions and 
> positions toward the issues of the presidency, Lebanon and the Middle 
> East.
>
> We have arranged for a private meeting with Dr. Mallat at the 
> restaurant Al-Bustan this coming Wednesday, November 16th where we 
> will have the chance to speak directly with him and ask him all kinds 
> of burning questions possible.
>
> Please join us at the Al-Bustan from 12.30 PM to 2.30 PM  on 11/16/2005
> Address:: 827 3rd Ave (bet 50 & 51), New York, NY  10022, Tel: (212) 759-5933
> Price for the lunch (including tips and taxes): $35.00
>
> In the meantime, we have a few links (see below) for you to read to 
> get to know Dr. Mallat better.
> We suggest also that you look him up on Google to see what an 
> impressive background he has.
>
> We hope you can make it
>
> Please RSVP by hitting "reply to all" and forward this email to your friends.
>
> Gabriel A. Sara, M.D.
> Assistant Clinical Professor Of Medicine
> College of Physicians & Surgeons at Columbia University
>
> Nada Anid, PhD
> Chaiperson, Chemical Engineering Department, Manhattan College, NY
> Research Associate, Earth Institute, Columbia University, NY
> Adjunct Professor, Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia 
> University, NY
>
>
>
>
> Read the Daily Star (issue of November 7th, 2005)
> http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=19838
>
>
> Read the Arabian Business (issue of November 13th, 2005)
> http://www.itp.net/business/news/details.php?id=18722&srh=mallat&tbl=itp_news
>
> Read the Financial Times (issue of November 6th, 2005)
> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/012847d4-4edb-11da-9947-0000779e2340,dwp_uuid=de7348bc-8bf6-11d9-b97f-00000e2511c8.html
> (we downloaded the article for you, see below)
>
>
> Financial Times
> Human rights lawyer seeks to bridge Lebanon's sectarian divide
> By Gareth Smyth
>
> Financial Times, 6 Nov 2005
>
>   The idea of a "president for all our citizens" would be obvious in 
> many countries. But in Lebanon - with 18 recognised religious groups 
> in a population of 4m - the idea remains a dream, rather than a 
> normal part of political life.
>
>   Chibli Mallat, 45, lawyer and scholar, announced this week he wants 
> to be such a president, although he is eligible only because he is a 
> Maronite Christian. The presidency is reserved by custom for this 
> particular sect - no Muslim, no orthodox Christian, no Druze need 
> apply.
>
>   Speculation about the next president arises because Emile Lahoud, 
> the incumbent, whose term extends until 2010, is weakened by close 
> association with Syrian and Lebanese security services that have been 
> implicated by the UN's Mehlis report into February's assassination of 
> former prime minister Rafik Hariri.
>
>   Other candidates for the post, chosen by the 128-seat parliament 
> rather than by popular election, are Maronites best known for their 
> role in the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war. Michel Aoun is a former army 
> commander who led a disastrous revolt against Syria in 1989-90 and 
> Samir Geagea is a former militia leader of the Lebanese Forces only 
> recently released from prison for wartime atrocities. Both see the 
> presidency as the Christians' by right.
>
>   Chibli Mallat, however, is a different. He is a rare kind of 
> Maronite who is a world authority on Shia Islam and who regularly 
> appears on al-Manar, television station of Hizbollah. He is also a 
> scholar - fluent in five languages including English and Farsi - with 
> close connections in Washington, Europe and the Muslim world.
>
>   For 20 years Mallat's voice has worked to keep alive in the Middle 
> East the twin flames of democracy and the rule of law. Facing 
> pervasive double standards and cynicism, he has argued for political, 
> moral and legal consistency.
>
>   Over a decade ago, he initiated Indict, the campaign to try Saddam 
> Hussein for war crimes. He also launched proceedings in Belgium 
> against Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, for his role in the 
> 1982 massacre by Israeli-allied Lebanese Christian militiamen of at 
> least 2,000 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in 
> Beirut.
>
>   I first met Chibli in Salahaddin, northern Iraq, during the 1992 
> Kurdish elections, and over time we became friends. Back then, Mallat 
> ran the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law at London 
> university's School of Oriental and African Studies. He returned to 
> his native Beirut in 1996 to practise law in the family firm. A 
> professor at the University of St Joseph, he has also taught at the 
> Islamic University in Beirut and is a visiting fellow at Yale.
>
>   Central to his academic and political work is his interest in the 
> Iraqi Shia scholar and activist Mohammad Baqr Sadr, murdered by 
> Saddam Hussein in 1980 as Iraq began its eight-year war with mainly 
> Shia Iran.
>
>   Mallat's book on Sadr - 'The Renewal of Islamic Law', published in 
> 1993, and widely translated - won the prestigious Albert Hourani 
> prize.
> "Sayyid Sadr was the century's most original Muslim thinker, a man 
> who used the tradition of Islamic law to analyse the modern world," 
> says Chibli. "At the time of his death, he was working towards a 
> synthesis of Islamic law and democracy".
>
>   Like Sadr, Mallat was rarely interested in scholarship for its own 
> sake. In 1987, four years before the Madrid conference set a new 
> direction for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, he wrote a paper 
> arguing in favour of such an international initiative on the Middle 
> East.
>
>   After Saddam's defeat in the 1991 Gulf war, Chibli helped persuade 
> the Iraqi Kurdish leadership to accept international monitors at the
> 1992 elections in "free Kurdistan".
>
>   "The Americans were dead-set against the elections," he later 
> recalled. "But it was important to show that if people in the Middle 
> East were given the chance to practise the purest form of democracy 
> they would rise to the occasion. Old women who couldn't read or write 
> queued up to vote at 4am."
>
>   Mallat's primary loyalty, however, remains to the Lebanese. His 
> grandfather, Chibli Mallat, was a poet whose Beirut newspaper, 
> Al-Watan, was burned down by agents of the French. His father, Wajdi, 
> chaired Lebanon's constitutional court.
>
>   Mallat well knows that Lebanon - with its kaleidoscope of orthodox 
> and Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, Palestinians 
> and Armenians - would be the first victim of any "clash of 
> civilisations"
> relished by extremists.
>
>   Much has changed in Lebanon with the 'cedar revolution' and the 
> withdrawal of Syrian troops. But sectarianism, though it may be 
> exploited by outsiders, retains roots in Lebanon.
>
>   Outside Lebanon for most of the past two years, I cannot judge 
> whether Chibli Mallat can win the presidency. He is certainly well 
> regarded across the sectarian divides - close to Walid Jumblatt, the 
> Druze leader, respected by Hizbollah, and a passionate advocate of 
> justice in the case of Mr Hariri, a Sunni Muslim.
>
>   His message - of citizenship, law, non-violence and human rights - 
> is one Lebanon, and the wider region, would neglect at its peril.
>
>  www.mallat.com
>
> Gareth Smyth is the FT's Iran correspondent
>
>



-- 
Beth Coleman
Assistant Professor of Writing and New Media
Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies
Comparative Media Studies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
14N-221A
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307