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August 14, 2008 | 3:01 am

From Pakistan to the Jewish Journal

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Photo

Umar Cheema

I couldn’t imagine what Umar Cheema was experiencing. Before leaving his native Pakistan, he’d heard much about the Jews. They were wretched, wicked people. They couldn’t be trusted. They were, in the words of those teaching the Quran, apes and swine. And here he was, in the den of the lion, seated above Wilshire in the editorial office of The Jewish Journal.

Joining the staff yesterday for our weekly meeting, Cheema, 29, and a fellow Muslim journalist, Utku Çakirözer of Turkey, first stepped into the office Monday. This was no trip to the zoo. Cheema and Çakirözer had been chosen for their journey into the parallel universe of Jewish journalism.

Both were selected by the Daniel Pearl Foundation to spend four months learning from American journalists; until last week, Cheema was training at The New York Times and Çakirözer at the Los Angeles Times. The program was created to honor the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was murdered five years ago largely for being Jewish. His Karachi kidnappers refused to believe that a Jew in Pakistan hadn’t been sent by Mossad. Because a mission of the fellowship is to breed interfaith understanding, it mandates fellows spend their final week in our office, learning that Jews aren’t really out to steal their land. (This has, as you can imagine, has made the fellowship a bit less competitive.)

Both Cheema and Çakirözer have fascinating life stories and career histories, which will be on display tonight at the L.A. Press Club during the annual reception for Pearl fellows. Moderated by my editor, Rob Eshman, its a well-attended event and currently has a waitlist.

If the discussion that followed our staff meeting is any indication, attendees are in for a treat. For more than an hour, mostly over kosher pizza, writers and editors asked Cheema and Çakirözer about their experiences reporting at home and what they had learned during their fellowship.

“I have found the epicenter of my life because the whole world is revolving around America,” Cheema said.

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Tuesday Bombing in Pakistan kills 14

He talked tough about terrorists in his own country, who only the day before had killed 14 in a bombing, saying these people hated not just America but the whole world. But he was also critical of the “Land of Bush,” which he believes is becoming much more isolated in the world.

“Even the places America considers its allies,” Cheema said, “they are friendships of necessity.”

In Pakistan and Turkey, two integral Muslim countries in the United States’ war on terror, anti-Americanism is incredibly common and in no small part because they perceive American efforts as a war on Islam.

But both journalists said they were surprised to find that Americans are not only incredibly diverse people, but increasingly critical of the current administration. As for Jews, well, I guess that’s why Pearl fellows have to spend a week at The Jewish Journal.

“I’d never met any Jews before coming here,” said Cheema, who didn’t realize there were a few Jews at The New York Times. “For me, the first face I see when someone asks me about Jews is Rob.”

“The more you learn about people, the better,” he added. “Ignorance creates suspicions and suspicions creates hatred.”

That’s a lesson I think Daniel Pearl, heard on the video after the jump, would agree with.

5 Comments — Leave your comment

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It’s a beautiful thing that Cheema has taken the first steps to reaching out. Now you have a relationship, perhaps you could put him in touch with the heroic Sallah Udin Shoaib Choudhury, an moderate Muslim journalist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh who runs the newspaper The Weekly Blitz http://www.weeklyblitz.net/ (how do you emebed those links?) Since 1993 he has been battling Bangladeshi governemtn imprisonment, torture, abuse, and accusations of espionage and sedition for offending the Muslim world, mostly by representing sanity, compassion and idealism. I am sure that if he happens to be out of jail right now Choudhury could speak to him with first-hand targeted information

Story here http://www.aish.com/societyWork/society/A_Moderate_Muslim_in_Danger_of_Ext.asp

Comment by Ben Plonie on 8/14/08 at 1:59 pm

One step at a time, Ben.

Umar is still adjusting to the fact that us Jews are actual people, not descended from pigs and monkeys. I don’t think a syllabus is what he needs right now.

It’s really beautiful hanging out with these guys when they are at The Journal offices.  They see familiar things in ways that are new to us. And, uniformly, they say their minds have been blown, their preconceptions blasted, their stereotypes shattered.

Utku and Omar both were so happy when they realized how Bush’s disastrous adventurism is *not supported* by the vast majority of citizens, and Americans are not afraid to say what they think, even to foreigners.

Umar offered this when asked about America: “I love the First Amendment.” 

Amen.

Some of the Daniel Pearl Fellows we can’t really talk about because it would endanger them or their families;  their societies still equate talking to Jews with collaborating with the enemy.

I personally am dedicated to continuing Danny Pearl’s mission by reaching out to those who have traveled so far to meet with us.

They are peaceful ambassadors of understanding and communication, and our cousins, Children of Abraham Avinu (Abraham our father.)

Hard to disagree with that.

Comment by The Web Guy on 8/14/08 at 10:02 pm

I thought all people descended from monkeys. That’s what Mrs. Garrison taught me.

Comment by Brad A. Greenberg on 8/15/08 at 2:27 am

Not a syllabus, just a neighboring Muslim who may speak his language in a way that Americans or Jews can’t. I’m sure he can handle it; he must be a bright guy. I wouldn’t want anyone to blow a fuse or anything, but it might be a real eye-opener if they would encounter Jews with a non-apologetic, self-interested national identity who feel their own pain as much or more than their pain. I once stopped late at night at a gas station with a Kashmiri attendant, and on seeing my kippah (this kind of thing happens) he was motivated to tell me (over 20 years after the fact) how deeply impressed he had been by Operation Thunderbolt (The Entebbe Raid) of 1976(!). Similarly the statement by Ingrid Betancourt of Colombia that “I think only the Israelis can possibly pull off something like this.”. In spite of all the political stupidity, in their heart of hearts that is what the world regards and respects, not the Jews straining and contorting their values to tolerate the intolerable.

It should tell us something that a professional journalist, someone with access to all sources of information and presumably a larger viewpoint than your average ‘pig and monkey’-type ideologue has a crisis assimilating the simple concept of the common origins and nature of all humanity, an issue made moot in the first chapter of Genesis, if you believe in that kind of thing.

Incidentally, in this age of outsourcing and globalization and diversity I have met and worked with many foreigners and many Muslims, among them some quite religious ones. At least Orthodox if not ultra-Orthodox (sounds like a kitchen cleanser).

Not to go too far off topic - but it develops that Barack Obama was one of very few uninvolved with meaage of Dr. Richard by Dewey.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 8/15/08 at 2:44 am

Unclear - after Dr. Richard Benkin had obtained 15% of congressional support for Choudhury, Obama gave him a handshake and a smile. Obama’s failure to stand up for a dissident Muslim where there was no political payoff has implications. According to Dr. Benkin “if Obama lacked the ability to stand up against injustice in Bangladesh,  where is going to fnd the moral courage to stand up to Iran, North Korean, or China?” And so it goes.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 8/15/08 at 2:51 am

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