Syrian-Canadian woman pushes for Mideast accord

By ANDY LEVY-AJZENKOPF, Staff Reporter
Thursday, 20 December 2007
http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13751&Itemid=86

TORONTO — Hind Aboud Kabawat is a Syrian-Canadian Christian woman and an emerging force for peace in the Middle East.

The “above 40” attorney-cum-interfaith dialogue advocate has spent the last few years bringing Jewish, Muslim and Christian women in the Middle East together – “Because women are more compassionate [than men],” she quipped – for roundtable discussions on how to foster peaceable relations between cultures.
An unabashed believer in the powers of love, compassion, forgiveness and reform in her home country, Kabawat has started a grassroots peace ball rolling.

In recognition of her ongoing efforts, Kabawat was presented with the 2007 Women’s Peace Initiative Award on Oct. 22 in Sarajevo.

The prize is given by New York’s Tanenbaum Centre for Interreligious Understanding, a non-sectarian, non-profit organization set up to “prevent the growing problem of verbal and physical conflict based on religion.”

Using high-profile connections in the legal and political worlds – gathered over years of work as a consultant with the World Bank, an international adviser with Joseph Young & Associates in Toronto and as the foreign affairs director of the Syrian Public Relations Association in Damascus – Kabawat, who has residences in both Toronto and Damascus, is dedicated to a world free from war.

But her legal career is not something she’s too focused on these days – “It helps me pay for my [peace work] expenses and travel” – she told The CJN last month in a meeting at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies building.

The trilingual mother of two – she speaks English, Arabic and French – was in town to discuss her award in an address to students attending the university’s dispute resolution certificate program, which she successfully completed in 2001 and credits as having changed her outlook on the world and the direction of her life.

The course, she said, taught her that conflicts don’t need to always have a winner and a loser to be resolved.

“Always before, I heard about how one side had to lose... [but] I learned how to put Jews, Shiites, Sunnis together to discuss daily life,” she said. “I never thought in my life I could learn about [the concept of] compromise.”

Though her home country’s current attitude toward Jews and Israel is somewhat cool, Kabawat said she grew up in a Syria that was very tolerant and still is – if you overlook the politics of religion.

“I had Jewish friends and went to Jewish weddings,” she recalled. “There’s nothing against the Jews in Syria. But there’s something bigger… it’s politics. There’s a difference between religion and politics there.”

To illustrate the point, Kabawat spoke of her friendship with Rabbi Marc Gopin, director of the Center on Religion, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution in Arlington, Va., whom she brought to Damascus in 2005 on a special “guest pass” to give a series of lectures in mosques on the benefits of interfaith dialogue.

“He’s my mentor,” Kabawat said, alluding to Rabbi Gopin’s philosophy that peace in the Middle East can be achieved through the bridging of religions and not merely via politics.

“Politicians don’t want peace. But we can learn from religion,” she said. “We need to get the good imams and rabbis together to break the ice and build peace. We can learn from Judaism and its tradition of asking questions… from Christianity and its message of love… and from Islam and its [lessons] in dignity and generosity. Put this all together and we can have the real peace then. We can learn from each other.”

When asked if this soft method of trying to reach peace is a little on the idealistic side, Kabawat was resolute.

“I’ve [seen] war twice in my life. In 1967 and 1973, when I was studying in Beirut,” she said. “War is ugly and peace is good. It’s simple. We need to start thinking of peace for our children. I remember what Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘I have a dream.’ Yes, I might dream big. But education can make this dream come true.”

Though she doesn’t often offer up opinion on political matters, Kabawat said she was glad that Syria took part in the recent Mideast summit in Annapolis, Md.

“I find many commonalities between Jewish and Arab cultures,” she said, adding that she’s noticed a renewed interest in peaceful dialogue between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East over the last few years.

“They’re now looking to build bridges between cultures because of the chaos in Israel, Palestine [and] Iraq. We need to solve this.”

While in Toronto, Kabawat also addressed a Dec. 4 meeting of the Canadian Association of Jews and Muslims at Temple Emanu-El.

She said she hopes to branch out in her peace efforts in North America in the new year, but will continue to make the Middle East a priority.

As a Syrian, Kabawat can’t travel to Israel. She hopes that one day her government will relax its restrictive policies vis-a-vis the Jewish state, but said she follows the rules of her country and has other priorities than to address this issue with Syrian officials.

“Can you imagine how great it would be for the economies in the Middle East if there was peace?” she asked. “We have to start teaching people how to listen to each other. There are more things that bring Jewish and Arab culture together [than there are] to divide them.”