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ID 0622115 – 4 DCN 04 – 08 – 11 – 0037
1241 Buford Road Box 35051 VIPIS President : Professor Robin-Edward Poulton PhD , rpoulton@comcast.net
RICHMOND VA 23235-4644 VIPIS V-President: Imam Shaheed Coovadia PhD , imamshaheed@vipis.org
Tel/fax: 1.804 – 355 – 6821
Or Tel: 1.804 – 502 – 9786 or 502-5372
VIPIS ANNUAL ACTIVITY REPORT – for our first year of activity 2005 presented to the VIPIS Board by the President of VIPIS, February 2006
VIPIS is a teaching organization. When we are engaged in educational activities we are fulfilling the mission we set for ourselves. The success of our Fall 2005 teaching about
Timbuktu - 5th Holy City of Islam - surpassed all expectations with its impact, its educational success and the educational spinoffs it has spawned thanks to the wildly successful visit to Richmond of Mali’s Prime Minister on November 11th.
Fundraising is essential for VIPIS to expand its activities beyond the ‘voluntary’ and into the ‘professional’ sphere, and fundraising must be a priority in 2006. Without resources our actions will remain small. Managing budgets will give the Board a real purpose as a decision-making unit. Meanwhile, our combined energies have produced a remarkable first year of activity.
Robin Edward Poulton MA (Hons), MSc, PhD, MBIM, ChONM, ChROSC
President VIPIS, Virginia Institute for Peace and Islamic Studies
Senior Research Fellow, UNIDIR Geneva
Guest Professor, European Peace University in Austria
Visiting Professor in International Studies 2002-2004 at VCU
Residence:
3206 Grove Avenue
Richmond VA 23221 USA
\
Tel/fax: 1 804 355 6821 rpoulton@comcast.net
Teaching Timbuktu to Elementary Schools
The October 2005 exhibition on TIMBUKTU IN MALI at the Richmond Public Library was a great success. The Malian Ambassador opened the exhibit on October 7 th
, and he
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brought the Prime Minister to see it on November 11 th
. The City of Richmond and the
RPL were gracious and generous hosts on both occasions. The exhibition was supported by loans from the Smithsonian Institution, Howard University, the Washington Bead
Museum, and several private donors. RPL proposes a second Mali exhibition in 2006.
Virginia’s and Richmond’s Public Schools
One delightful result of the VIPIS decision to reach out to elementary schools has been the contact this has brought us with teachers and administrators. Every one has been charming and efficient, and they have been a pleasure to work with. This is a good place to thank Virginia’s Secretary for Education, Mr Peter Blake, for the gracious way in which he facilitated and led the Prime Minister’s visit. The visit to the Fisher Elementary
School was organized by Ms Betsy Barton and Ms Charlene Brooks and it was a stunning success.
Richmond’s and Virginia’s Public Schools teachers working with 3 rd
thru 6 th
graders and preparing Standards of Learning (SOL) on the medieval Mali Empire NEED SUPPORT.
More than 2000 students saw the VIPIS exhibition, another 1000 heard story-tellers Baba
Wague Diakite or Macky Tall, and 400 teachers heard lectures from Dr Poulton – courtesy of the fine leadership for Richmond Public Schools in the history and social studies area provided by Ms Thelma Williams-Tunstall and Ms Evlyn Soltes who helped bring Mali and Timbuktu into the 3 rd
grade curriculum. All of these Friends of Mali met with the Malian Prime Minister during his visit on November 11th.
Discovering Timbuktu in Mali provides an interesting and unobtrusive way for young people to learn that Islam is a religion of peace. Our intervention was well-received in
Richmond, just as the Mali exhibition was in Newport News during 2003-2004. We shall continue to organize teacher training, exhibitions and story telling for grades 3-6.
We should take the exhibition to other places in Virginia. This needs resources. We will need to obtain grants for hiring student teachers, so we can take a smaller traveling exhibition to rural areas and into schools in the disadvantaged urban areas of Tidewater,
SW Virginia and NoVa. We cannot do this without financial resources.
Prime Minister’s visit November 11th
Prime Minister Ousmane Issoufi Maiga came with Ambassador Abdoulaye Diop and a delegation of 20 to see children learning about Mali in the JB Fisher school. He was graciously received and accompanied by Mr Peter Blake, Secretary of Education. The
PM visited the Governor, The Honorable Mark Warner, and met the university presidents of Virginian Tech, UVA, W&M, & VCU. He addressed a standing-room-only public meeting of students and faculty at VCU, and attended a reception at RPL where he saw the Mali-in-Timbuktu exhibition and was feted by local civil society associations and by a Malian music group from UVA led by Heather Maxwell PhD who welcomed the PM in his own language with a spectacular song sung in Songhoy.
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Speeches were made by Ms Harriet Henderson, Librarian, Mr William Harrelle, CAO of
Richmond, Mr Umar Kenyatta of the African-American Muslim Congress and Ms Janine
Bell of the Elegba Dance and Music Society in Richmond. It was a grand success.
Teaching Pride in Africa and in Islam
Many Virginians have Malian ancestors, and many African Americans have ancestors whose early American destiny took them from Mali and through Richmond. Some experts estimate that 80% of African Americans have an ancestor who passed through
Richmond. Developing a pride in Africa will help the new generations improve their selfesteem and personal ambition. It will help them to develop an understanding about their ancestors and the value of their traditions. They will learn about Africa’s ancient monotheism, that Abraham found God in Africa and took Him from Africa to the Jews,
Christians and Muslims. Community relations and mutual understanding will improve if
Americans learn that Islam, Christianity and Judaism share common roots and follow the same prophets. Most Americans will be astonished to learn that the Prophet Mohammed
(pbuh) was an Arrian Christian before the Angel Gabriel (Gibril) revealed to him the
Message that became Islam. African Americans should be encouraged to learn the truth about their history, and discover that Islam was the religion of many of their Malian ancestors. This is an educational path we shall continue to tread.
Islamic Center of Virginia ICVA
We were privileged to receive His Excellency Mr Abdoulaye Diop, Ambassador of the
Republic of Mali, who came to Richmond on Friday October 7 th for the official opening of the Timbuktu-in-Mali exhibition and joined juma prayer at the mosque. At the invitation of Imam Shaheed and President Mirza, the Ambassador spoke to the assembled faithful after prayers and ICVA is encouraging VIPIS to bring more ambassadors.
Virginia Commonwealth University
The Ambassador spoke during the afternoon of October 7 th
to a combined meeting of the
Muslim Students’ Association and the African Students’ Union, emphasizing the links between Africa and the United States of America. Many of Virginia’s earliest settlers came from the former Empire of Mali, although recent research suggests that the first group of 20 captives who were seized from a Portuguese Man-o’War (and landed at
Jamestown in 1619) may have come from Angola, rather than from the Senegambian coast as was previously believed. Timbuktu provides both an educational and a spiritual heritage to America. The creation of Sankore University in Timbuktu during the 1100s pre-dated the founding of Europe’s earliest universities in Paris and Prague and Oxford between 1211 and 1245, and created in Timbuktu one of Islam’s and Africa’s great centers of learning.
On Friday November 11 th
– after a meeting with VCU President Eugene Trani - Prime
Minister Ousmane Issoufi Maiga spoke to a conference organized jointly by the VCU
Student Government Association (led by President Eddie O’Leary) and the VCU
Department of International Education (led by Professor Peter Kirkpatrick). The
Commonwealth Ballroom was full – a tribute to Eddie’s good organization as well as to the importance of a Prime Ministerial visit. The Prime Minister celebrated the links
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between Virginia and Mali, the official participation of Mali in the Jamestown 2007 celebrations, the common African heritage of Mali and Virginia, the twinning of
Richmond and Segou as Sister-Cities, and called for exchanges between Virginia and
Mali at university level in terms of teacher exchanges, joint research projects, and student exchanges including mutual recognition of credit courses and qualifications.
Virginian Friends of Mali - VFoM
One route for VIPIS to promote knowledge about Africa and Islam is through the
VIRGINIAN FRIENDS OF MALI, created during the Prime Minister’s visit to support his initiative of twinning Richmond with the city of Segou, as Sister Cities. VFoM will be independent from VIPIS, but the new association arose through the initiative and imagination of VIPIS board members – notably Eddie O’Leary and Ali Faruq.
Developing teaching about Peace and Islam for High Schools
This is an area we have not tackled in 2005. In the future we will hope to find resources for teaching in middle and high schools. We have negotiated an arrangement with the
Teachers’ College of the Peace Studies Institute of Columbia University in New York, where we will be able to train our student teachers and to develop curriculum. Now we simply need the resources to hire them and train them.
Using recent graduates as class animators (and teaching them to teach) we will develop supplementary teaching materials online and in the classroom, and take them to schools both as in-class teaching assistance and as extra-curricular activities (such as UN Clubs to debate world affairs and understand other points of view).
Working with Virginia’s school systems
A letter was sent in December 2005 to Virginia’s Secretary of Education proposing a partnership and enclosing some provisional budgets for his consideration. If we do not succeed in getting funding from the State, we will need to address other sources of funding. We hope for a response during February 2006.
Teacher training
VIPIS has been requested by Richmond Public Schools to run teacher training courses for elementary teachers linked to the Mali SOL. This is an excellent idea, but as long as our operations run in a piecemeal basis and are largely based on volunteer effort, it is difficult to see a coherent pattern emerging. In addition, some teachers want to earn credits towards a Master’s degree, which brings us to the question of State accreditation.
Expanding international studies at university level
Developing ancilliary teaching to expand and improve international studies is one of our key objectives. The Fall semester 2005 saw Imam Shaheed continue his Arabic teaching in John Tyler Community College while Dr Poulton taught a course on Islam,
Afghanistan and the Politics of Central Asia at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Negotiations for a partnership with the VCU School of World Studies seem to have stalled. In any case, we are destined to collaborate with several institutions – UVA,
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GMU, UR, VTech, VUU, SRCC, ODU, Hampton, Newport, Howard, Eastern Mennonite are all possible partners, and we should also develop our relations with the community colleges. A selected few letters will be sent out during the first part of 2006.
We need is some form of accreditation so that teachers and students who attend VIPIS courses can earn credits towards qualifications and courses in other institutions. While
VIPIS could conceivably win accreditation for its courses, the logical route seems to be linking to an existing university so we can create mutual research and other intellectual benefits with their academic staff, develop new and exciting teaching, reach out to their wider student body, benefit from their experience, create synergies. VIPIS, in short, is an exciting young educational resource seeking a parent.
JAMESTOWN 2007
Through the agreement between the Governor of Virginia and the Malian Prime Minister that Mali should be a partner in the Jamestown 2007 celebrations, there is a role for
VIPIS and another role for Virginian Friends of Mali. VIPIS can develop an Empire of
Mali and Empire of Songhoy educational focus for the Jamestown 2007 festival and the months leading up to it. The African immigrants of the 1600s should be recognized and remembered as people who helped build Virginia and the USA. Of course they all came from the lands of the Empire of Mali, and probably most of them were Muslims.
SISTER-CITIES RICHMOND and SEGOU
VFoM will take a group to Segou in 2006, and other groups in following years. VFoM will organize musical exchanges and develop educational exchanges: writing & paintings between elementary schools, student exchange visits at secondary level, research exchanges between Malian and Virginian universities, etc. This is all a VIPIS spin-off that will increase awareness for the teaching that VIPIS wants to offer to Virginia.
VFoM will also promote understanding about Virginia’s links to Mali: historical, artistic, musical, religious, spiritual, cultural. Where in the world are Family Values stronger than in Mali? Where did democratic governance first become the normal form of social organization, if not in Mali? Humankind began in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, and our early ancestors moved down the Nile between 50 and 60,000 years ago. Others crossed the Ocean to Arabia and India, or migrated south and west across the African continent. The first human civilization was in Lower Egypt. After the Valley of the Nile, the second place to see human settlements, music and dance, painting and religion, agriculture and iron smelting was almost certainly the Valley of the Niger: Egypt, Nigeria and Mali saw the first human settlements and the beginning of ‘civilization’ long before the first hunter-gatherers ever reached Mesopotamia or Europe or China or America.
These are some of the paths that VFoM should follow. Every step covered by VFoM will be a step launched by VIPIS.
FESTIVAL OF THE NIGER RIVER IN SEGOU each February
VFoM will make this Festival the annual focus for the VIRGINIAN FRIENDS OF MALI which is the first huge education creation arising out of VIPIS. Music makes friends and teaches peace.
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Music and Islam
VIPIS needs to adopt a clear position on music and poetry. While mainstream Islam has consistently feted artists and architects, patronized the arts and sciences, admired poets and musicians, recently literalist salafist groups have poured scorn upon music and used its repression as a form of political bullying. In a political struggle for control of Islam, salafists oppose brotherhoods, sufi mysticism and shia Islam. Nowhere has the conflict between traditional Islamic tolerance and literalist intolerance been more obvious than in
Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the sufi traditions of Central Asia confront doctrinaire deobandist repression of art and culture and music.
The confusion bred by the internal debates of Islam has spread to Richmond, where the
Muslim Students Association in VCU expressed worries about being associated with
Malian music at the RPL Timbuktu exhibition. Fear is not healthy for spiritual development. I believe that the educational role of VIPIS should extend to clarifying such an issue as this. Where people claim to act in the name of Islam but in fact act contrary to the doctrines or traditions of the religion, VIPIS should say so in unambiguous terms using a didactic approach. The Board will consider this matter.
VIPIS Board
During the year our founding Treasurer, lawyer Ms Saima Khattak, returned to Pakistan.
Her role was critical for the conception, creation and registration of VIPIS. We love her, miss her and wish her every success. The Board has replaced Saima with two people:
Treasurer:
Legal advisor:
Mrs Carol Warner
Ms Nadia Hyder
The contribution of Ali Faruk, President of MSA at the time when VIPIS was invented, has been great and constructive, and the Board decided to co-opt Ali as member in his own right.
The role of MSA has been rather confused during 2005 with regard to VIPIS. The Board proposed to MSA that the President should be a member ex officio and in addition there should be an MSA designated member making two student representatives in all. The idea was that this would increase student participation and cement our relations with
VCU. It seems that the comparative mutism of MSA and the apparent disinterest of SWS will force the Board to reflect anew about the links between VIPIS and VCU.
The Board in January 2006 is composed as follows
Person
Dr Robin-Edward Poulton
Position
President
Member since
2004
Imam Dr Shaheed Coovadia
Eddie O’Leary
Carol Freeman Warner
Nadia Hyder
Ali Faruq
Vice- President
Secretary
Treasurer
Legal Counsel
Member
2004
2004
2005
2005
2004
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A woman teacher
Sadiq Mirza
MSA delegate
Member
President, Muslims Students
Delegate, Muslims Students
None came forward
2005
None came forward
The Board is a ‘work in progress’ and has functioned quite well informally, as the year’s activities testify. It will change and evolve in accordance with our needs and objectives.
During 2006 we will need to work out a more regular system of consultation and decision-making for the Board.
VIPIS Advisory Council
The Advisory Council adds luster to our institution through the distinction of its members, and is a source of counsel and advice for the President and Board. Otherwise the function is honorific: we are not intending to ask the Advisory Council for much work. The VIPIS Board agreed that the role and composition of the Advisory Council should also evolve in a fluid and flexible fashion.
In October 2005 it was decided to invite His Excellency Abdoulaye DIOP, Ambassador to Washington of the Republic of Mali, to become the Chair of the Advisory Council and he has done us the honor of accepting this honorary position.
Two distinguished ladies and an old Richmond friend have also graciously accepted membership of the Advisory Council: Dr Amina Wadud, a very distinguished Islamic scholar on the faculty of Virginia Commonwealth University; Her Excellency Fatou
Haidara, African Director of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation in
Vienna, Austria; Dr Ghassan Rubeiz, Lebanese-American former Professor of Social
Work and peace negotiator in Beirut, recently retired from heading the Washington
Bureau of CCF, who has already designed some peace, social justice and Middle East courses with Dr Poulton. By lending their names to our Advisory Council, they show support for our objectives of promoting understanding, teaching and research about Peace and Islam. Other invitations will be issued in due course when distinguished persons express interest in and support for our work.
VIPIS relations with other institutions
Thanks to Ali Faruk, we have established contact with the CAIR in Washington DC, and they are encouraging about our interests and objectives. Thanks to the Mali exhibition we have established excellent relations with the Embassy of Mali and this will lead to other contacts. Already the Chairman of the VIPIS Advisory Council, Ambassador Diop, has introduced us to the Malaysian Ambassador in Washington and we hope he will visit
VIPIS and ICVA during 2006.
Imam Shaheed has placed VIPIS on the agenda of the ICVA Board and the VIPIS
President wrote a formal letter to ICVA requesting their blessing and offering collaboration. Imam Shaheed has also placed VIPIS on the agenda of the Mosque
Coordination Committee and the Inter-Faith Council of Richmond. The existence of
VIPIS is therefore generally known among the religious leaders in Richmond.
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The President has attended functions organized by the African American Islamic
Congress, the American Friends Peace Committee, the Universalist Unitarian Peace
Committee, the African-American Muslim Congress, and exchanged correspondence with the new Director of the Richmond Peace Education Center, as well as the Richmond
Holocaust Museum and the First Freedom Foundation in Richmond that promotes religious understanding and acceptance.
We have been in regular contact during 2005 with Richmond City Hall, Richmond
Public Library, Richmond City Schools, Virginia Department of Education, Virginia
Union University, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Richmond, J
Sergeant Reynolds Community College, John Tyler Community College, William &
Mary College, Virginia Historical Society, Virginia Fine Arts Museum, Virginia Union
University African Art museum, Richmond Black History Museum, University of
Virginia, Georgetown University, Howard University, and the Smithsonian Institution.
In addition we have drawn attention in educational and government circles through the
Mali exhibition at the Richmond Public Library and through the visit of Mali’s Prime
Minister.
VIPIS has therefore become known and fairly well-established in the community during
2005, after only one year of existence.
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D.
President
Drafted January 2006, circulated in final form February 2006
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