Hoe belaglik is geweldlose verset? Oor 'n spiritualiteit van vrede.

In my nadenke oor 'n spiritualiteit van vrede kom ek dikwels af op die belangrike nie-geweldadige protes-aksies wat figure soos Gandhi en Martin Luther King bekend gemaak het. Keer op keer word dit ‘n voorbeeld van hoe ‘n mens uiteindelik prakties geweld kan besweer en vrede kan vind. Die artikel wat ek vandag lees, laat my dit opnuut besef (kyk hier onder).

Vandag, lank nadat die mense waarteen hulle in opstand gekom het, se 
name onder die stof van die geskiedenis genadeloos verswelg is, staan mense soos Martin Luther King uit omdat hulle uitdruklik geweld verwerp het in hul aksies om 'n regverdige samelewing en omdat hulle hoop beliggaam en bevorder het. Hulle name is verewig omdat hulle gewys het dat 'n mens ongewapen merkwaardige veranderings in 'n gemeenskap kan bereik.

Dit is nie maklik om geweldloos te wees nie. Die berig hier onder vertel hoe naïewe jongmense wat by die geweldlose versetsbeweging in die burgerregte-tyd in Amerika bespot, verag en selfs in tronke gesmyt is.

Min het hulle, geïnspireer deur die charisma van Martin Luther King, die baptiste predikant uit die Suide, gedink dat hulle “naïewe”, bespotte verset dekades later ‘n hele string Moslem lande sou motiveer om teen brutale magshebbers in opstad te kom. Hulle sou nooit gedroom het om te dink dat strokiesprent-boekies (!) van die Christen-predikant wyd in hierdie Moslem lande deur jong mense gelees sou word en hulle aandryf tot ‘n passievolle soeke na vryheid.

Min van hulle het ooit kon dink dat in gesprekke tussen Christene en Moslems, die motief van geweldloosheid waarin hulle geglo het wat hulle in hul jeugdige idealisme aangevuur het, so 'n invloed sou uitoefen en so ‘n enorme impak op ‘n hele reeks Arabiese lande sou veroorsaak nie.

Geweldloosheid is nie iets wat Gandhi of Martin Luther King ontdek het nie. Dit is ‘n belangrike deel van die Evangelie wat die kerk vanaf die vroegste tye verkondig het. Dit is eers toe die kerk in die magsfeer van politiekery opgeneem is, dat oorlog en geweld formeel deel van die leer en oortuiginge van die kerk geraak het. Wie kan tog die Bergrede lees en vir ‘n oomblik twyfel aan Jesus se boodskap oor geweldloosheid?

Vir baie mense in die kerk is geweldloosheid belaglik, gevaarlik en afwykend.  Gelowiges moet maar fyn kyk wat in Noord-Afrika aangaan. Ja, honderde mense word vermoor deur die wrede onderdrukkers. Maar vryheid sal kom. Daar is iets ontstuitbaars aan geweldloosheid. As gelowiges hieroor fyner luister en gouer is om die tiranne te bestraf en te straf deur geweldlose verset, sal daar dalk minder bloed vloei.


Hier is die artikel.

Joan Mulholland was watching television one day when something flashed across the screen that gave her chills.

Unarmed young men and women blocked rows of tanks. Giddy demonstrators placed flowers in soldier's bayonets. Protesters sang "We Shall Overcome" -- with an Arabic accent.

The images hurled the retired schoolteacher back to another moment in spring when she was a teenager risking her life for change. In May 1961, Mulholland joined the "Freedom Rides." She was part of an interracial group of college students who were attacked by mobs and imprisoned simply because they decided to ride passenger buses together through the Deep South.

"So much of what has happened in Egypt is like déjà vu," says Mulholland, who appears on PBS Monday at 9 p.m. in a mesmerizing documentary called "Freedom Riders."

"The pictures that have been in the news have been almost interchangeable with the civil rights movement here years ago," she says about the Egyptian protests that toppled a dictator. "I've seen so many visual parallels that I'm starting to save pictures in a scrapbook."

The Freedom Riders were called communists and outside agitators. As they commemorate the 50th anniversary of their rides this month, another group of people in the Middle East is calling them something else -- inspiration.

Several leaders in the protests sweeping the Middle East say they are using the same nonviolent playbook Freedom Riders and other civil rights activists used years ago to resist oppression.

Dalia Ziada, North Africa director of the American Islamic Congress, a group that promotes interfaith tolerance, says some Egyptian protesters took heart from the disciplined nonviolent resistance activists once displayed during civil rights campaigns like the Freedom Rides.

"It was inspirational," she says. "I realized that no matter how long it takes, nonviolent tactics lead to success in the end. This made me and all my colleagues here in Egypt stand strong in the face of police brutality during revolution time.''

Reading MLK in Arabic

At first glance, there seems to be little connection between Freedom Riders and the "Arab Spring," a wave of civil uprisings sweeping the Middle East. The series of protests are being driven by people from various ideologies that have nothing to do with nonviolence.

Yet there are signs that the seeds of nonviolent resistance that Freedom Riders and other civil rights activists planted years ago in America are being scattered throughout the Arab Spring.

And some are now starting to sprout:

A 50-year-old comic book explaining the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophy of nonviolent resistance has been adopted by Egyptian protesters and distributed throughout the Mideast.

The comic book, republished in Farsi and Arabic by the American Islamic Congress, has attracted so much attention that Georgia Rep. John Lewis, a Freedom Rider leader, has marveled publicly over its impact.

Ethan Zuckerman, founder of Global Voices, an international group of journalists that hosts conferences for Arab bloggers, says many Arab protesters have deliberately shunned violence.

"The protests began, at the very least, as explicitly nonviolent events," he says. "In many of the marches, not just in Tunisia and Egypt, but in Bahrain and Syria, protesters have chanted 'Peaceful, peaceful', making it clear that any violence from the military was an overreaction."

The New York Times ran a recent profile on Gene Sharp, an elderly American author of books like "The Politics of Nonviolent Action" who has discovered that his books are popular reference guides for protesters in Egypt and Tunisia.

One of the Freedom Rider leaders, Bernard Lafayette Jr., has already established three nonviolent training centers in Palestinian territories.

He says many Arabs can relate on a visceral level to the brutality Freedom Riders and other civil rights activists faced.

"There's a direct connection," Lafayette says. "They've gotten a chance to see the film footage and a chance to read the history of the movement in the U.S. and the success we've experienced."

One of those Palestinian leaders inspired by Lafayette is Sami Awad, executive director of the Holy Land Trust, a Palestinian nonprofit group that works to develop nonviolent approaches to ending what it calls the Israeli occupation.

Awad says he was inspired by the civil rights movement as a teenager. His uncle, a nonviolent activist, constantly invoked the movement's leaders and tactics.

"I even remember reading children's comic books, with stories of MLK, even in Arabic, that my uncle would smuggle into Palestine with other materials on nonviolence because they were illegal under Israeli occupation," he says.

Awad says the contemporary footage of Arab protesters confronting Arab dictators reminds him of the old civil rights films he has watched.

"Seeing the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Syria break the barrier of fear and be willing to stand in front of armies and tanks with open arms in nonviolence brings back immediate memories of what happened in the South during the '60s," he says.

'We were past fear'

Some of the Freedom Riders who broke through their own barriers of fear 50 years ago still sound amazed at their actions, the PBS documentary reveals.

Most didn't have any support except for one another. Their parents didn't approve. Nor did leading civil rights leaders. Federal and state officials warned them they couldn't protect them.

They stepped on the bus anyway for perhaps the same reason some Arab youths joined the crowds in their country -- they didn't want to miss history.

"It was like a wave or a wind that you didn't know where it was coming from or where it was going, but you knew you were supposed to be there," said Pauline Knight-Ofosu, a Freedom Rider, in the PBS documentary directed by award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson.

Courage, though, can evaporate once someone gets hit with a club upside the head. But that didn't happen to most of the estimated 400 students who eventually joined the Freedom Rides, the documentary says.

Though mobs burned a bus and beat riders, and state officials sentenced some to state prison, the Freedom Riders kept coming.

Some admitted, though, that there were moments when they doubted their decision.

Ivor "Jerry" Moore recalled walking into an Alabama bus station and locking eyes with a reporter as they both realized a mob was coming for Moore.

"Our eyes met and when he looked away, my very guts shook," Moore said in the film. "He must have thought we were doomed."

The mob attacked Moore and might have killed him if a photographer hadn't distracted them by taking their picture.

Mulholland, who traveled from her hometown in Arlington, Virginia, for the Freedom Rides, said their determination eventually eclipsed their fear.

"We were past fear. If we were going to die, we were going to die, but we can't stop," she said in the documentary.

What happened to the Freedom Riders afterward?

Their rides, first organized by James Farmer and a civil rights group called CORE, made international headlines. They attracted the support of King and embarrassed the Kennedy administration into acting.

At one point in the documentary, the camera captures then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy at a press conference where he defensively said that life for blacks was getting better.

There is no reason in "the foreseeable future that a Negro couldn't be president of the United States," he said.

Three months after Kennedy made that statement, while hundreds of Freedom Riders were in jail, Barack Obama was born.

The Freedom Riders eventually forced the federal government to issue a sweeping desegregation order for bus and rail stations. Five months after they began, they were victorious.

"It was the first unambiguous victory for the civil rights movement," says Raymond Arsenault, author of the book "Freedom Riders," on which the PBS series is based.

"They showed you could go into Alabama and Mississippi and win. They were willing to die to make a point."

Arsenault says he sees the same spirit in the Egyptian protesters.

"All they had was their courage and commitment. They didn't have weapons, huge amounts of funding or international support. It was the same with the Freedom Riders."

He says many Freedom Riders went on to become "shock troops" for other civil rights campaigns.

A half-century later, the wave they joined is still surging, he says.

"They had no reason to believe they could pull it off," Arsenault says. "Their elders in the movement were telling them that they were crazy and were going to set the movement back. But they weren't waiting for the courts or their leaders. They wanted freedom now, not freedom later."