Cultures in Harmony Selected As Best Practice

Cultures in Harmony is pleased to announce that we have been selected as a Best Practice by the International Cultural Engagement Task Force and the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy (USCCD) and as such will be highlighted as a key component of the upcoming U.S. Summit for Global Citizen Diplomacy, to be held November 16-19, 2010 in Washington, DC. Cultures in Harmony is one of ten organizations so honored by the International Cultural Engagement Task Force; the others include the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Silk Road Project.

In preparation for the Summit, Task Forces in nine sectors – business, community-based organizations, development assistance, global health, higher education, international cultural engagement, international voluntary service, K-12 education, and youth service - were created to highlight ways in which organizations within each sector can expand existing initiatives and offer new and innovative programs to encourage more engagement of Americans in global citizen diplomacy. The Task Forces are co-chaired by experts in their respective fields and represent broad networks of U.S. non-profit, non-partisan organizations. Summit Task Force groups compiled and vetted hundreds of program submittals as part of the selection process, and will make presentations on the role of their sector in increasing U.S. citizen engagement in international affairs at the Summit in November.

Portfolio summaries of the selected Best Practices from each of the nine sectors will be available at the Summit for all participants, including potential funders. The U.S. Summit for Global Citizen Diplomacy is a national meeting presented by the USCCD in partnership with the U.S. Department of State, Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. The Summit is designed to broaden the momentum generated from the work of the USCCD as a national resource base and network for Americans to be engaged as citizen diplomats, and two major leadership forums focused on the revival of citizen diplomacy as a critical component of U.S. public diplomacy and foreign policy strategy.

The Summit will be the first such meeting since President Eisenhower’s People-to-People conference on the same subject 54 years ago, and will serve as the launch for a “Decade of Citizen Diplomacy” with a goal to double the number of American citizen diplomats by 2020.

Cultures in Harmony and the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy stand together in their commitment to the expansion and promotion of citizen diplomacy initiatives. The U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy (USCCD) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization established in 2006 to promote and expand opportunity for all Americans to be citizen diplomats, and affirm the indispensable value of citizen involvement in foreign relations.

Playing for the Fighting Sixty-Ninth

Nine years ago today, I had probably the most incredible and moving experience of my life. Juilliard organized a quartet to go play at the Armory. The Armory is a huge military building where families of people missing from Tuesday's disaster go to wait for news of their loved ones. Entering the building was very difficult emotionally, because the entire building (the size of a city block) was covered with missing posters. Thousands of posters, spread out up to eight feet above the ground, each featuring a different, smiling, face.

I made my way into the huge central room and found my Juilliard buddies. For two hours we sight-read quartets (with only three people!), and I don't think I will soon forget the grief counselor from the Connecticut State Police who listened the entire time, or the woman who listened only to "Memory" from Cats, crying the whole time. At 7, the other two players had to leave; they had been playing at the Armory since 1 and simply couldn't play any more. I volunteered to stay and play solo, since I had just got there.

I soon realized that the evening had just begun for me: a man in fatigues who introduced himself as Sergeant Major asked me if I'd mind playing for his soldiers as they came back from digging through the rubble at Ground Zero. Masseuses had volunteered to give his men massages, he said, and he didn't think anything would be more soothing than getting a massage and listening to violin music at the same time.

So at 9:00 p.m., I headed up to the second floor as the first men were arriving. From then until 11:30, I played everything I could do from memory: Bach B Minor Partita, Tchaikovsky Concerto, Dvorak Concerto, Paganini Caprices 1 and 17, Vivaldi Winter and Spring, Theme from Schindler's List, Tchaikovsky Melodie, Ave Maria, Amazing Grace, My Country 'Tis of Thee, Turkey in the Straw, Bile Them Cabbages Down. Never have I played for a more grateful audience. Somehow it didn't matter that by the end, my intonation was shot and I had no bow control. I would have lost any competition I was playing in, but it didn't matter. The men would come up the stairs in full gear, remove their helmets, look at me, and smile.

At 11:20, I was introduced to Col. Slack, head of the regiment. After thanking me, he said to his friends, "Boy, today was the toughest day yet. I made the mistake of going back into the pit, and I'll never do that again." Eager to hear a first-hand account, I asked, "What did you see?" He stopped, swallowed hard, and said, "What you'd expect to see." The Colonel stood there as I played a lengthy rendition of Amazing Grace which he claimed was the best he'd ever heard.

By this time it was 11:30, and I didn't think I could play anymore. I asked Sergeant Major if it would be appropriate if I played the National Anthem. He shouted above the chaos of the milling soldiers to call them to attention, and I played the National Anthem as the men of the 69th Regiment saluted an invisible flag. After shaking a few hands and packing up, I was prepared to leave when one of the privates accosted me and told me the Colonel wanted to see me again. He took me down to the War Room, but we couldn't find the Colonel, so he gave me a tour of the War Room. It turns out that the regiment I played for is the Famous Fighting Sixty-Ninth, the most decorated regiment in the U.S. Army. He pointed out a letter Abraham Lincoln sent offering his condolences after the Battle of Antietam...the 69th suffered the most casualties of any regiment at that historic battle.

Finally, we located the Colonel. After thanking me again, he presented me with the coin of the regiment. "We only give these to someone who's done something special for the 69th," he informed me. He called over the regiment's historian to tell me the significance of all the symbols on the coin.

As I rode the taxi back to Juilliard...free, of course, since taxi service is free in New York right now...I was numb. Not only was this evening the proudest I've ever felt to be an American, it was my most meaningful as a musician and a person as well. At Juilliard, kids are hypercritical of each other and very competitive. The teachers expect, and in most cases get, technical perfection. But this wasn't about that.

The soldiers didn't care that I had so many memory slips I lost count. They didn't care that when I forgot how the second movement of the Tchaikovsky went, I had to come up with my own insipid improvisation until I somehow (and I still don't know how) got to a cadence. I've never seen a more appreciative audience, and I've never understood so fully what it means to communicate music to other people. And how did it change me as a person? Let's just say that, next time I want to get into a petty argument about whether Richter or Horowitz was better, I'll remember that when I asked the Colonel to describe the pit formed by the tumbling of the Towers, he couldn't. Words only go so far, and even music can only go a little further from there.

Response to criticism

While I was proud that my open letter to Dr. Terry Jones was featured on AOL News, I was dismayed to read that most of the comments do reflect support for his decision to burn the Koran. Usually, vitriolic comments on the internet do not dignify a response, but in this case, I feel that they are part of an important dialogue.

One general tactic was to paint me as an un-American traitor who is desecrating the memory of the 9/11 victims. Someone said I can't possibly be an American; I must actually be a terrorist. Someone calls me a "Muslim extremist." Another commenter observes "sounds like a terrorist wrote this article."

On September 16, 2001, I performed first for families of the 9/11 victims, and then for soldiers from the Fighting Sixty-Ninth Regiment as they returned from rescue and clean-up work at Ground Zero. In honor of this performance, Col. Geoffrey Slack of the Fighting Sixty-Ninth Regiment gave me the regimental coin, saying "We only give these to someone who's done something special for the Sixty-Ninth." Since then, I have traveled the world with Cultures in Harmony, promoting a positive image of the United States.

Most of the criticisms are simply humorous:

• One fellow says "hippacrates get real." Assuming the misspelling of Hippocrates, yes, I agree that it's high time for ancient Greek physicians to "get real."
• One commenter opposes "saraha" law and claims vast experience with the "musklims." Is Saraha law like Sahara law (always travel with several big jugs of potable water)? Are the "musklims" the offspring of the musk oxen still found in Arctic regions? My views are "Niave." The capital N must mean that I share the views of Antony Niave, who according to LinkedIn is a telecom manager in the DC area.


• One commenter threatens to burn an "epogy" of Mohammed. I had to look this up. "Epogy" is a graphical analysis automation and numerical optimization framework. Sounds complicated: if you build one of those and somehow manage to connect it to Mohammed, that would be such an achievement that I don't think you'll want to burn it.
• One commenter says: "William Harvey, you should go play your fiddle for the war mongering mooslims and see how much they like it you idiot!" Are the mooslims related to the musklims? Are we talking baby moose? Because if we're talking Muslims, then I've played for them in the US, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey, and yes, they like it.
• Another of my favorites: "You sir are a stupid man. As a christian, I will turn the other cheek, but I only have two. Your muslims declared war on us, kill our people, and refuse to allow us equal consideration abroad. Your tratorous slobber is profoundly ignorant." Thank you for correcting me. I was laboring under the misapprehension that you had 17 cheeks.

And of course, there was the popular argument that I, an American of Jewish heritage, have Nazi sympathies: "Mr. Harvey. It is idea's like yours that help keep America's enemies on the attack. Your line of thinking is Treason. If people like you were in charge of ww2,we would all be goose-stepping."

Perhaps 1 of 20 comments is supportive. With such supporters, who needs enemies? One supporter just writes: "That's action is NOT Christian." Oh good. I am always mentioning the pernicious, perfidious That, the oddball of his family who labors in the shadow of his virtuous brother This. I'm so pleased you agree with me: That's action is NOT Christian. Another supporter says Mr. Jones will spew HATERED. Gasp. How can he? Red is such a beautiful color.

Yet behind the insufferable floods of infantile invective lie two points with which I cannot argue:

1. In 2010, there is no manner in which normal people could offend Christians to the extent of endangering their life. Perhaps an abortion doctor's life is in danger from extremist Christians who oppose abortion, but the average citizen or even a prominent author or artist can insult Christianity in any nation in the world without fearing for his/her life. One cannot say the same about Islam. It has been explained to me that this is because some Muslims feel that the word of God and the honor of their prophet really are more important than any human life. Moreover, although God is all-powerful, part of the "judgment" of any individual Muslim (in the views of some Muslims) consists of whether or not that Muslim has acted to enforce Islamic law on earth. Therefore, although their God would be perfectly capable of punishing transgressors, he will judge otherwise-upright Muslims by whether or not they themselves acted to punish transgressors.

To me, this is unacceptable. Nothing is more important than the sanctity of a human life, and an opinion that states otherwise is wrong. As correctly understood, Islam respects the sanctity of a human life.

2. No one can or should try to deprive Dr. Jones of his rights. I would not be proud of an America in which he did not have the right to launch this protest, and I would no longer call myself a patriotic American, as I do now. In America, we celebrate our freedom of choice. My letter was an attempt to convince him to change his mind, not an effort to convince the government to force him to change his mind.

One of my few more thoughtful critics writes:

I disagree most with reason 10, as should everyone else here. It's insulting and it puts the onus of terrorism on those being terrorized. In effect it's telling us to buy into terror by not treading on other people's toes for fear of "offending" them, lest they react with violence. This is dangerous and fearsome because offense is an arbitrary value that may change from person to person, and this is the root of an Orwellian government. Jones is endangering a book made of paper and leather; he is NOT endangering American lives. If someone makes the conscious CHOICE to react with murder and terror, that is their responsibility and the blame should be placed entirely on them. Understand: you may say and think whatever you wish, and you may offend whomever you want in this beautiful country we live in. If someone so offended reacts with violence, that is NOT YOUR FAULT. Let's start NOW illuminating this distinction between speech and thought and retaliatory actions. If a man in the UNITED STATES wants to burn a book, he has that right, and his actions are protected under our wonderful Constitution. If another man chooses to murder to protest, he is a criminal and shall be treated as such.

I do hope that Dr. Jones will choose not to burn the Koran, but I also hope that those Muslims who choose to protest him will do so without harming anyone. May we all continue our struggle for a world in which we may agree or disagree while still respecting each other and acknowledging that the most sacred value of all is the inalienable worth and dignity of each and every human life.

An Open Letter to the American Pastor who wants to burn the Koran

E-mailed via the form at the website of the Dove World Outreach Center at 8:20 p.m. on September 5, 2010, from Kabul, Afghanistan

Dear Dr. Terry Jones, Pastor, Dove World Outreach Center:

On a warm late summer day at Gainesville Guitar Academy, a 15-minute drive from your church, children plunk out the sound of their favorite songs on guitars. Yesterday at the music school where I teach, I also listened to a student play guitar until his soft chords were drowned out by the shouts of demonstrators marching past. Our music school is in a majority Muslim country, and the marchers were protesting your announced intention to burn copies of the Koran on September 11. As a fellow American, one whose life is endangered by your actions, I implore you not to do this. As you provided ten reasons why you wish to burn the Koran, I will provide ten reasons why your protest is the wrong thing to do.

1. It disrespects the memory of those who died on 9/11.

The vicious thugs who attacked the Trade Center and the Pentagon almost nine years ago did so in order to widen the cultural divisions between Muslims and non-Muslims. Your planned protest would also accomplish this, allowing the message of violent extremists acting in the name of Islam to resonate more widely. The innocent victims of 9/11 deserve better than for you to use the anniversary of their death to commit an act of which their murderers would have approved.

2. It is not Christian.

You defend your decision with a passage from the Bible (Acts 19:18-20) that does not apply to this situation. The passage refers to "those who had practiced curious, magical arts" gathering to burn books in which they no longer believed. This is quite a different act from you choosing to burn a book in which you have never believed, and in which over one billion people still believe. Furthermore, when the passage says that the "Word of the Lord grew and spread and intensified, prevailing mightily," it is clear that this is due to the increased number of new believers, not to the act of burning books which was, in this case, an act chosen by those new believers to signify their faith.

I hope you will re-read the Sermon on the Mount, particularly the assertion that "every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment" (Matthew 5:22). Your protest and the words on your website reflect anger and provoke it.

3. It is un-American.

The First Amendment protects Americans from any effort by the government to abridge our freedom of speech; it does not exhort us to say whatever comes into our heads. If the government said that you had no right to express yourself, this would be un-American, but irresponsibly exercising that right stains our hard-earned heritage of liberty and our tradition of tolerance. Book-burning is an act more typically used by dictators as a form of suppression than by free socieities as a form of protest.

4. It contradicts your message.

I have taught music around the world because I believe that it can reach out across boundaries of culture and religion with a message of peace. From the name of your church, I would assume that you shared my interest in peace (the dove is a symbol of peace) and in outreach. Your actions foment hatred instead of peace and encouraging reaching inward towards our innate prejudices rather than outward towards the possibility of understanding.

5. It reflects an unwillingness to explore the wisdom in the Koran.

How much of the Koran have you actually read? It is possible to open it at random and quickly find a passage with which most people would agree. I did this and immediately found Sura 7:84: "Commit no disorder on the earth after it has been made so good." We should all be so virtuous as to live by such words. Given the disorder that may result from your actions, I regret that you have not yet realized that this is a book that contains much for non-Muslims to respect.

6. There are other books denying the divinity of Jesus

You state on your website that you are burning the Koran because it contradicts your belief that Jesus was the son of God, yet there are thousands of books which do this, such as those by renowned atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Thomas Jefferson willfully excised all references to the divinity of Jesus from his book, "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth." Would you burn the Declaration of Independence, the document without which it is doubtful our ancestors would have earned for you the right to launch this ill-advised protest?

7. There are more effective ways to express your views

If you disagree with any actions by individual Muslims, by all means say so! Engage with them, write to them, discuss with them, work with them, break bread with them, agree to disagree with them. I have done this with hundreds of Muslim people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, and the United States. Only good has come of it. The method of expressing disagreement that you have chosen is too hurtful to be effective.

8. Your views reflect limited contact with actual Muslims

Your website reveals an irrational fear and loathing of Muslims. How many devout Muslims have you met? How many have you read about who were not violent extremists? I have met hundreds of Muslims and performed violin for thousands more. They are great, good, and average; they are like humanity because they are of it. None of those Muslims warrant the fear that permeates your website. I urge you to read about the life and works of Abdul Sattar Edhi to learn what a true Muslim looks like.

9. Destroying a book is always a bad idea.

John Milton, who knew more about Christianity than either of us, wrote in the Areopagitica: "As good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, God's Image; but he who destroys a good Book, kills reason itself, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye." No matter what the book contains, no matter the quality, it has the right to be read.

10. You endanger American lives.

Your actions endanger my life. The vast majority of Muslims who learn about your planned protest will peaceably counter-protest, but there are likely to be some, operating under their own perverted interpretation of the religion, who will want to protest your actions by killing Americans wherever they may find them. Not just myself, but thousands of Americans in the military, in the foreign service, and doing humanitarian work in countries from Mauritania to Indonesia (where thousands of Muslims have marched in protest of your plan) are in danger.

I understand that you are disturbed by many of the actions that have been committed in the name of Islam. I understand that at this late date, you will not want to easily walk away from the attention of the international media at a time when they are happily relaying your message to the world.

Therefore, I do not suggest canceling your event, but rather, changing its form. By pure coincidence, September 11, 2010, falls during the celebrations to mark the end of the Muslim Holy Month of Ramadan. Instead of burning Korans, I hope you will instead consider inviting Muslims to celebrate Eid ul-Fitr with you, thus giving both of you an opportunity to freely and frankly share views over a delicious meal.

Tomorrow, in spite of the continued counter-protests planned for my city, I will teach music to Muslim children. You will continue preparing for the event you have announced for September 11. I only hope that you consider an alternate form for this is event, one that is in keeping with the implications of the name Dove World Outreach Center, with the message of Christianity, and with the tolerance, compassion, and empathy that have always characterized America at its best.

Sincerely yours,
William Harvey
Music Teacher in a Muslim Country