Subject: Religious and Ethnic Tolerance in Central Europe
From: "Ken Wollack" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2017 09:45:45 -0400

I thought you would be interested in this poignant article by NDI's Rob
Benjamin on ethnic and religious tolerance in Central Europe.  With support
from the State Department, NDI is brining together Christians, Muslims and
Jews to form alliances that promote greater understanding of the
contributions by minorities to  societies in the region.

With best regards,

Ken

Kenneth Wollack
President
National Democratic Institute
455 Massachusetts Ave., NW, 8th Floor
Washington, DC 20001
202-728-5500 (Tel)
888-875-2887 (Fax)
email: [email-masked]
website: www.ndi.org

*Fighting for Ethnic and Religious Tolerance in Central Europe: Muneeb’s
Story
<https://www.demworks.org/fighting-ethnic-and-religious-tolerance-central-europe-muneeb-s-story>*

*Muslim in faith, Czech at heart: Muneeb speaks to fellow participants from
the Czech Republic and Slovakia at a recent NDI gathering on joint
responses to growing religious and ethnic intolerance.*

Muneeb has a quiet reserve that gives way to a beaming smile when you ask
him about his work and life. A long-time resident of Brno, the capital of
the Moravian region of the Czech Republic, Muneeb’s English is halting, so
he is quick to turn to Czech, his everyday language for three decades.
Muneeb is married, a father, and runs the Czech Center for Muslim
Communities. He reserves his native Arabic for family and spiritual matters.

For Muneeb and other longtime residents of Muslim faith—many if not most
Czech citizens—the refugee crisis has lifted the curtain on some unpleasant
realities. The unprecedented wave of humanity from the greater Middle East
has elicited sympathy and aid from many quarters of Czech society. But many
other express fear about what the presence of foreigners means for their
safety and identity—although few if any refugees have actually set foot on
Czech soil, much less settled there.

The growing hostility is not reserved for refugees. In the Czech Republic
and neighboring Slovakia, nativist and populist rhetoric denigrating Islam
and its adherents is taking on a shrill tone, amplified in the media,
promoted by far-right politicians, and often hateful, uninformed, and
deliberately misleading. On occasion such rhetoric is uttered by government
officials, giving rise to concerns that ethical---not to mention
constitutional--principles of equal protection, regardless of race,
confession, and ethnicity, are somehow negotiable.

Although the Czech Republic and Slovakia are relatively small countries, at
10 million and five million respectively, their societies are a rich,
diverse kaleidoscope of nationalities and religions: Muslims from the
Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africans who profess Islamic and
Christian faiths, Orthodox and Catholic Ukrainians, and Buddhist and
Confucian Vietnamese, among multitudes of others coming Western Europe and
North and South America.

Some are refugees who didn’t necessarily choose either country. Others are
migrants who decidedly did, attracted by economic opportunity and proximity
to larger immigrant communities next door in Austria and Germany.

Still others, like Muneeb, showed up a long time ago, during the communist
era, when then-Czechoslovakia hosted university and post-graduate students
from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Muneeb came to Brno from his native
Baghdad in the mid-1980s to train as an aeronautical engineer. He arrived
in communist Czechoslovakia, went through the 1989 Velvet Revolution, the
Velvet Divorce of 1992, the building of a new democracy and free-market
economy, membership in NATO and the European Union, the financial crash of
2008, and the political and social ferment that has ensued since. He set
down roots, married a Bosnian refugee, and is raising his children. There
isn’t much of anything that someone of Czech nationality has experienced in
30 years that Muneeb hasn’t. When the jokes start flying, Muneeb’s right in
there, mixing it up in the Czechs’ particular brew of winking irreverence.

Muneeb does quite a bit of press these days, given the political turmoil
surrounding migrants and Islam. Already quite well known, his public
profile has grown as he communicates to ordinary Czechs about how the
Islamic community adds to their society, rather than tears it down.

For Muneeb, the ideal is to combine personal identity and social
integration, thereby serving up new role models who embrace Muslim identity
and Czech society as one and indivisible. It’s what he feels about himself.

The onslaught of xenophobia, racism, and anti-Islamic prejudice is jarring
to Muneeb, as keenly felt as are his abiding attachments to his home.
Muneeb will not take the bus, concerned about vigilantes, although his
children, sporting the latest gadgetry and preoccupations of teenagers the
world over, jump on and off public transport with practiced nonchalance.
Normalcy comes and goes. Returning from abroad, Muneeb and his family
routinely face hours of inspection and questioning at airport customs,
their well-worn Czech passports put to the side. The bank account of his
mosque is suddenly suspended, and no explanation is given.

Muneeb recently traveled to Bratislava to join a group of leaders
representing religious and ethnic minority groups in the Czech Republic and
Slovakia at an event organized by the National Democratic Institute (NDI),
with support from the U.S. State Department, to forge alliances that can
help raise and expand public understanding of minority contributions in
both countries. Muneeb bristles at the mention of ‘minority rights’ because
he doesn’t feel like a minority. But that doesn’t sidetrack his focus on
getting the word out about non-native citizens and residents.

Muneeb thinks messages about morality and ethics, based on fair and equal
treatment, will win the day. Others go for practical appeals related to
immigrant economic contributions, and foreign investors who prize a diverse
labor force and social inclusivity. Muneeb likes the emotional, personal
appeals for racial and religious tolerance used by human rights groups in
the U.S. and Canada. Others respond to the harder, artsier, more
provocative content found in Europe. Looking beyond their own governments,
they all wonder what Brussels, and Washington, are prepared to do, if
anything, to push back against a growing tide of populism and nativism.

Most participants didn’t know each other before NDI’s program, which also
includes groups in Hungary and Poland and runs for two years. They warm to
each other quickly, and talk turns to joint projects promoting tolerance
and peace. At NDI’s workshop they feel strengthened and secure. But time is
pressing. From outside the noise of intolerance can be heard.

Muneeb returns home to Brno, energized but pensive. He and his fellow
participants will forge coalitions, propose projects, and get to work. It
will be the first time for ‘crossover’ collaboration between their
communities. Some wonder if it will work, if there is enough in common
among Jews, Muslims, Christians, and a mix of ethnic groups to agree on
what to prioritize, what to say, and how to say it. The will to cooperate
is there but, when it gets down to concrete substance, can they agree?

It’s not altogether clear that they have the luxury of choosing.
Circumstances being what they are these days, cooperation seems essential