DEALING WITH DIFFERENCES
TRANSCRIPT

OPENING

HOST INTRO

Hi. I'm Jason Biggs. Like the rest of you, I was shocked and angry about the attacks on September 11th.

Of course, we've all heard about terrorism around the world, but who ever thought that it would become a part of our lives in America? It has brought us together as a nation, but it has also been a real test of what it means to be an American, especially when it comes to accepting diversity. In this program we're going to see how various teens are dealing with their differences, both here and in the Middle East.

In the past year, many Muslim Americans and Arabs have been treated as if they too were responsible for what happened on 9/11. More than 1700 bias incidents were reported. But it's important to remember that they, like so many others, have come to this country in search of freedom and opportunity.

Much of the hostility comes from misunderstanding the religion of Islam and those who practice it. So we talked with some Muslim teens and a Sikh to see how they were affected, and to clear up some common misconceptions about the teachings of Islam.

WHAT IS ISLAM?

Salima: My name is Salima. I'm 17, I live in New York, and I am an American.

Ali: My name is Ali. I am a Muslim-Irani-New Yorker.

Hager: My name is Hager Youssef. I'm 15 and I was born in Ancient Egypt and right now I practice the Islamic religion in New York.

Roksana: My name is Roksana and I was born in Bangladesh and I came to America at the age of 5.

Shawn: My name is Shawn. I was born in America. I was raised an American. I am an American. I am 16 and I am Sikh.

Shawn: Everyone was affected by 9/11 regardless of religion, race, background, anything. Because it's an attack on humanity and humanity is one.

Ali: It's facts that Muslim-Americans, that they died, they got injured, they were in a state of shock.

Hager: There's such this big percentage. This huge amount of Muslims who are actually angered at what happened and condemned what happened.

Salima: Every American saw the planes hit and felt like wow, who could do this to people. But you could be a Muslim-American, Jewish-American, Christian-American, and still feel the same.

Hager: To a certain point I am still confused about you know, why, why would you do that?

Ali: I'm angry at a couple of facts. One is bin Laden and his gang of thugs. You're talking about two planes -- that's really not what they hijacked overall -- they hijacked the whole Islamic religion, the whole Islamic view in the worldwide arena.

NEWS SOUND BITES

MISCONCEPTIONS

Salima: Some common misconceptions of Muslims in America -- which ones do you want? Most of them are that Muslims are evil. They have twisted minds. They have bombs in their hands and they hate anyone that isn't a Muslim.
Roksana: That we are all violent, that we're all believing that what happened at the World Trade Center is right, anything that has to do with violence, and would go to heaven for it. That's what it is.

Ali: If you say Muslim and a person thinks a guy with a robe and a beard and a Koran in his hand, like you know, chanting death to America.

Shawn: I get asked a lot, are you a terrorist? I think a lot of people are under the impression that everyone who wears a turban is somehow a terrorist. My uncle got chased by a guy on a highway for two hours and that guy had a shotgun on him and that guy thought he was a Muslim and these things occur all the time. There was a Sikh guy in Arizona that got killed. There were, you know, Sikh temples that were burned and attacked. I think there should be knowledge that there is a difference between Muslim and Sikhs. They are two different religions and different people. But even further, that Sikhs are not terrorists and Sikhs are not bad people, neither are Muslims.

"ALLAH" IS THE ARABIC WORD FOR GOD

Roksana: Those hijackers, they don't represent me. They don't represent the people here. They don't represent what I believe and what the world should be like. My parents made me take my hijab off, to go to school, or anywhere else. A hijab is a head covering that Muslim women wear to cover their hair. I mean, my parents were really concerned and I was objectional because I didn't want to change the way I dress, the way I acted, because of what 25 people did out of the 1 billion Muslims in this world.

ONLY ABOUT 15% OF THE ESTIMATED 1.2 BILLION MUSLIMS WORLDWIDE ARE ARAB

Shawn: Islam, you know, it is the second largest religion in the world and not a lot of people even now about it at least enough to say it is a peaceful religion.

Salima: Islam does not tell people to kill others. It does not tell people to murder in the name of Islam.

Hager: Actually, the word Islam comes from the word Sedan, which means peace. I mean, when we greet each other we say... which means may peace be our prime year.

MUHAMMAD IS A PROPHET WHO WROTE ALLAH'S REVELATIONS IN THE KORAN

Salima: Christianity and Islam are branches of Judaism. They branched off so they all come from the same. They are very, very similar. We believe in one God, they believe that you should love people, and lead a peaceful life. Muslim people follow both the Torah, the Bible, and their own book the Koran.

Ali: Arabs are actually a minority in Islam. The majority are not Arab and they are not living in the Middle East. You have Malaysia, Indonesia, you have so many countries Bangladesh, Pakistan that are not in the Middle East but are Islamic countries. We are all living in the same world, a very small world and um, you know, we are all human and the only way we will have a positive future is if we put all our difference aside or you know, understand these differences.

Roksana: I had this fight with a guy and his misconceptions about my religion and he said that well, since you say that all Muslims will go to heaven eventually, well, what about those 19 hijackers and Osama bin Laden and all those terrorists? Are they gonna go to heaven as well? Is this obviously what your religion teaches you? I just wanted to clarify some misconceptions that they had about Islam and women and terrorism and how they relate together, especially after 9/11. I decided I wanted to do a workshop on it.

HIGH SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND FINANCE

Roksana: Hello everyone, my name is Roksana and this is my other facilitator Salima. What do you guys think of Osama bin Laden and terrorism? I mean, that's an obvious question, but it just has to be asked.

Audience response: When you think of terrorism before everything happened on September 11, it didn't really hit us, but now that we are right here, we can look out our window from our cafeteria and see the site. So there is a lot of confusion that goes on because at the same time of being angry, more than anything you really want to try and understand why it is that somebody would go about doing what they did.

Audience response: We've been through a lot like we've been here with the World Trade Center incident. That affected us also because it's our school. This is like our second home.

Roksana: Walk across if you ever made or heard a rude remark after the World Trade Center attack. Does anyone here know how terrorism is presented in the Koran?

Audience response: They say if you give your life to Allah, then you kind of reserve your place in heaven.

Audience response: The Taliban is using the religion to kind of cover up and make people believe what they want to believe. Like, their religion doesn't tell them they should kill people, but they're making people believe that that's what it says and twisting things around.

Audience response: Before the workshop, I always thought that the Koran taught something negative about other people that are not Islam. Like, let's say that somebody is doing something wrong or against Islam, then that person in Islam has a right to hurt them. But in this workshop I learned that that is not the truth.

Audience response: Islam as a culture and like the Muslim religion, I mean it doesn't teach bad things and people think that it doesn't and I think I learned a little more about that.

Roksana: I just got a lot of positive feedback from these people. They were like, I never really knew that about Islam. Especially the one guy that I had a fight with. He said that he was really sorry and that you know, he had so many misconceptions and was thanking me for clearing that up.

Shawn: Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda um, and even the Taliban, they took Islam and the essence of it, the peaceful Islam and they twisted it around.

Salima: Al-Qaeda and bin Laden use Islam as a way to justify their means because that's the way they get people to follow them. He's using it because they are miserable and he knows they are miserable and he can make them believe certain things and twist their minds to his way of thinking, his twisted way of thinking.

Ali: They are taught by people like bin Laden, the reason for their misery is the United States. And bin Laden or anyone like him uses Islam and says if you do this you will go to heaven.

Roksana: That's definitely not true because you will go straight to hell because in Islam, suicide itself, you're cursing your life and in a way saying your life is unfair and your kind of in a way saying, Allah put you in this situation and any way that I am gonna get out of it is by killing myself.

JIHAD

Shawn: Everybody thinks the word Jihad mean Holy War, when in fact it means something else.

Ali: Unfortunately it has been taken in a wrong way, both by some people like bin Laden and both by some of the media.

Roksana: Doesn't mean taking a bomb and killing yourself and others and taking a machine gun and supporting bin Laden.

Hager: And it doesn't mean you know, a Holy War and fighting for a God because fighting is not part of Jihad. It just simply isn't.

JIHAD – THE STRUGGLE WITHIN YOU

Ali: Jihad basically means a struggle, but what is emphasized in Islam is a struggle within you too, not a struggle against you know, against people. It's a struggle within you to bring the truthful person in you and you can bring yourself to enlightenment or salvation.

Hager: The next step is to come out to the people and educate them in Islam and that's what Jihad really means.

Salima: I'm an American. I like being an American. I wouldn't have a problem if I didn't come back to my country. My father was a Marine. I support what he was doing.

Shawn: I'm just as American as any other person out there in my school. There's no difference and I have just as much love for America as anyone else. My parents came to this country 20 years ago. They came here because they have the protection of the Constitution. They have the protection of the government and they know that over there, they don't have those rights.

Ali: The good thing about this country in particular is that it doesn't give the opportunity to people to follow their religions and express their thoughts and I hope that in the future, in response and in regards to what happened on September 11, that does not go away because that is really what America stands for, not only for Americans but for people outside. It's the right for people to be who they are.

JASON BIGGS INTRO: SEEDS OF PEACE
There's no question that understanding and getting to know each other as people with common interests is the first step toward dealing with differences. And nowhere is this more important than in the Middle East, where generations of Israeli and Palestinian teens have lived next to each other, but have little or no contact. The result is hostility and stereotyping on both sides.

We found an interesting program called Seeds of Peace that over the past 9 years has brought over 1200 Israeli and Arab teens to live together for 3 weeks in the summer at a camp in Maine. Besides participating in all kinds of sports and fun stuff, they also discuss their differences at co-existence sessions as they work toward solutions. Let's meet some of these teens who call themselves "Seeds."

SEEDS OF PEACE Segment

Bashar: I am a Palestinian Arab Israeli. I live inside the green line. I know how Palestinians outside the green line feel. What they wanna reach in their lives, what kind of feeling and what kind of anger and hatred they are holding against the Jewish-Israelis. At the same time I can understand the same fear and the same anger that the Jewish-Israelis hold toward the Palestinian-Israelis.

Elad: My case would might be described as even more extreme. Where I live is surrounded by Arab villages and cities. It's a place the Palestinians consider to be a settlement and Israelis do not.

Bashar: Palestinians would never shake hands or even try to coexist with a settler. it was the same for me too until I met Elad and I we starting talking and discussing things and I look at him like a friend of mine. He's not just a settler. He lives on a settlement but it doesn't make him inhuman. It doesn't make him my enemy.

Hilla: It's surprising to think that you live in the same city and your first time to meet an Arab-Israeli to talk to them will be after 17 years that you have lived there.

Elad: We are not naive. We are not dreamers. We experience what is going on in the region with our flesh bone everyday. I had a guy I knew killed 15 minutes from my house. My Palestinian friend he has tanks next to his windows. We live it. We are not outsiders.

Bashar: When I pass checkpoints and going like outside my city. Each time they stop me they search me, they check my ID card and you know it's so humiliating to go through these kinds of things. I do understand the necessary of security. Bullets and bombs do not make difference between Arab or Jews. You know death hits everybody.

Koby: The feeling is that everyday you go out of your home you don't really, you don't have any insurance that you will be back and your parents don't have any insurance that you will be back. Even when you go on a bus it came to a point where you think what are the statistics if you sit in this seat you will live or if you sit in that seat you will live. That is the reality we live in today.
Seeds of Peace is neutral ground for 3 weeks for people to come together from places that uh do not allow them to meet in normal day to day life.

Elad: The social and fun activities get you much more closer than talking. And then as soon as you have this friendship it's much much easier when you get to talk.

---Coexistence sessions---

Girl 1: Both sides don't feel safe. And both sides try to say what they are doing is responsive of another thing of another attack and it's just going on and on, over again.

---End---

Bashar: Each one of us goes to the camp with a full package of hatred, misunderstandings, stereotypes. We usually go there with a belief that the other side is my enemy and I'm there to tell them that you're wrong, I'm right and you need to correct yourself.

---Coexistence sessions---

Girl 1: We can't be 100% trusting for eachother.
(interrupted) Why not?

Girl 1: Because it's hard, it's hard as a first step but it could happen in the future, for me as an individual it can't happen.

Girl 2: Back home little children see the war and they have rage in their hearts. They see themselves carrying guns and shooting an Israeli soldier and on the other side an Israeli child sees himself holding a gun and shooting a Palestinian person.

---End---

Bashar: We have the opportunity to face each other to spill our hearts and actually discover that our enemy has a face.

Elad: It can get like very emotional. people can cry, people can shout. but when you get to the end of the day it's what makes us bond together.

Koby: We talk about you know, uh what it is to be a settler what it is to come from a refugee camp and live in a refugee camp. What it means to have a closure and not be able to leave your town and not be able to go to school if your school is outside of town. What does certain uh things in our religion mean to us. What does Jerusalem mean to us, as Jews as Muslims as Christians. All these issues that we deal with back home, we deal with in the media, in school but we never deal with the other side.

---Coexistence sessions---

Girl 1: Soon enough this nice place is going to be a place where you and I just meet then were gonna go back to reality, where you're gonna be 15 minutes away from me and I not gonna even see you.

Girl 3: You'll go home and go back to your reality and I'll go back to my reality but you won't forget. We're not making peace here were making people believe in peace.

Girl 1: I made a lot of friends here not just one. And I'm gonna go home and say that I had a lot of Israeli friends and people will just have to accept it at some point.

---End---

Hilla: I find myself now defending the other side, as we like to call it. If I hear someone say something about Muslims that I know for a fact is not true and I learned it at the coexistence that my friend told me that then I am able to tell this person it is not true.

Elad: To see the reality we live in. I had enough of it, I really, really had enough of it I live it way, way more than I should and I did not grow up in a society and the way of living that a person my age should.

Hilla: Right now as much as I can do is being a social leader and doing things in my community is in even if it is the smallest thing as doing a presentation. I think that's a big change.

Bashar: We've been working with kids in age from 10 to 12 and trying to engage them with our experience.

Elad: I am still in shock from what happened. There in a Jewish school, Me and Bashar went there. We talked and gave them a (inaudible) presentation and then we started working in groups and the kids loved him, jumped on him, played soccer with him. He has two bracelets they actually gave him. And they really feel in love with him. And like, and he's an Arab guy in times of war.

Bashar: And I saw the reaction of kids in the Arab school when they met Elad and they really liked him. And they really tried to ask him questions and they wanted to know more even though they are kids.

Elad: We really do try to reach out and do try to get them to have some sort of critical thinking of their own, even in the early age. Really try to break some of those stereotypes.

Bashar: I can't change the way that my friends think. I am only giving them a new way to think. It's direction.

Elad: We've gotta seek peace and we've gotta still have out hopes. But we've got to keep our lives going. Like, obviously the routine is being hurt, and you cannot live like normal, but you have to do you most, otherwise you're giving in for it.

Koby: The process of going, coming over the hatred that each one of us has that we were born with and taught when we were young and we saw on TV all the time. True relationships and trusts is not a 1 day thing. It has to continue through a long period where we can meet with each other, do things with each other and keep in touch via internet um and basically grow up together so when we are adults it will be a very meaningful part of out lives.

Elad: We have been fighting on and on and on and there is no other way. There is either coexistence or no existence.

CLOSING

Jason Biggs: Well, I hope you've all had a chance to think about how important it is to understand and accept each other's differences. Today we've seen how to look beyond the stereotypes. And the next time you meet someone, try to get to know them a little better, you might find you have more in common than you think.
Voiceover: Now, you can find out more about the teens in this program on the show's Web site www.pbs.org. There are also video clips, a transcript of the show, and lots more. And we'd really like to hear your opinions and ideas on this and other topics. So you can send an email to inthemix@pbs.org or write to the address on your screen. Thanks a lot!