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Salee Allawe, a ten-year-old child, was critically injured on November 7, 2006 while playing with her brother, cousin and some friends outside her uncle's home in Haswa, Iraq. Salee said they were playing hopscotch when US jets flew overhead and fired missiles. A US missile killed her 15 year-old brother and her cousin and blew off Salee's legs at the knees.
Salee and her immediate family are Sunnis and were forced to leave Baghdad by Shiite militias. Salee's father, Hussein Allawe, took them to Haswa, a central Iraqi town between Baghdad and Fallujah, to stay with relatives. I met the vibrantly beautiful Salee at the University of South Carolina in Columbia on 9/12/07 at a presentation of her odyssey to America sponsored by the Muslim Student Ass'n, No More Victims, the Upstate Coalition for Compassion and the Carolina Peace Resource Center.
Approximately four million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the ongoing violence-with half of them living in Syria and Jordan and others, like Salee and her family, who are displaced within their own country. Many of the nearly one million Iraqi refugee children in both Jordan and Syria are not in school, but sitting at home with nothing to do. The displaced are growing by as many as 50,000 a month. This is the largest exodus since the mass migrations caused by the creation of the state of Israel in 1948
The US State Department said they would take 7,000 Iraqi refugees in February, 2007 but the number actually taken by the US is much lower. 135,000 Vietnamese refugees fled to the United States at the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War with U.S. families sponsoring refugee families until they found work
Meanwhile, the killing goes on. On September 14, the Los Angeles Times reported on a new survey by a British polling agency (ORB) suggesting that the civilian death toll from the Iraq war could be more than 1 million.
ORB has conducted several surveys in Iraq and their new survey results followed statements this week from the U.S. military who were accused of trying to play down Iraqi deaths to make its strategy appear successful. The military has said civilian deaths from sectarian violence have fallen more than 55% since President Bush sent an additional 28,500 troops to Iraq this year, but provides no specific numbers.
The ORB poll surveyed 1,461 adults and it suggests the total number slain during more than four years of war was more than 1.2 million.
We have not halted the killing of Iraqi civilians, but Cole Miller, Founding Director of No More Victims, has been helping injured Iraqi children like Salee with health care in the United States. His organization has brought over 7 severely injured Iraqi children so far. Miller seeks out local folks to sponsor the children.
Ann Cothran of Williamston, S.C. and her friends Selena Frank and Lisa Hall responded by starting the non-profit Upstate Coalition of Compassion to help a war-injured child.
Miller said "Ann Cothran sent me an e-mail back in 2005 and said they wanted to help."
Liv Osby, a health writer for the Greenville News has covered Salee's story. "All we knew was she needed two prostheses," Cothran told Osby. "We contacted Cole, and he found Salee's medical records and sent them to us. Then we went to the Shriners' hospital, and they said they could help. At that point, we started trying to bring Salee to this area."
By holding car washes, bake sales and other fundraisers around the community, the group raised $12,000 to help get Salee to Greenville.
The funds cover airfare, hotel and other expenses for the children and their parents, Miller says. They also help the families that must stay behind in Iraq.
Meeting Salee Allawe, Cole Miller and Ann Cothran and sharing the love and compassion that brought them together was an experience I'll never forget. We have 4 grandchildren. Our oldest is Madeline, who is the same age as was Salee when Salee had her legs blown off while playing hopscotch. Madeline and her friends like to play hopscotch too here in Columbia, S.C.
In my world, Madeline and Salee are one, because... "Jesus loves the little children, All the children of the world. Black and yellow, red and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world."
Jesus, the prince of peace knew that non-violence---not war---was the answer for all God's children.
Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and political activist in Columbia, South Carolina. www.turnipseed.net
10 Comments so far
Show AllHa ha. Believe me, the Christ was and is a liberal, not a war-mongering conservative. Christ would never endorse all this death and killing. Read Revelations, the last book of the bible. Organized religion itself will be thrown into the lake of fire along with everything else that is evil. It says so in Christianity's own bible. Revelations 18:21 - 24. check it out.
Peaceman, I agree with you completely. I've read that Jesus traveled to Egypt to learn their wisdom & thence to Tibet, India & China (where he was called St. Isa). Please send me more info: Rayberth2@aol.com Thanx.
Rayberth: I had a small phamphlet sized book written by an Indian mystic in the early part of the Twentieth Century who lived in several countries and traveled to many lands in his quest for knowledge. I read the book about thirty-four years ago and was so impressed that I mailed it to a religious friend to read and examine, and the friend passed it on and it was never returned to me. That's not an adequate answer, I know, but my memory is not the best either. If I can get the name of the book, and obtain another copy, I'll correspond with you with more details.
Many do search for the meaning of life-all life...but not all of us seek answers or knowledge of this 'meaning'. When you say religion can never be destroyed, only perverted, definitions come into the discussion. Millions of examples can be used for all religions in the world. A man like the late Jerry Falwell who had a lot of hatred, contempt, and animosity towards people he disagreed with or Pat Robertson who advocated murder have given religion a bad rap. And the list goes on. Whether it was the Catholic Inquisition in Europe, the Salem Witchhunt in New England, the Afghan Taliban treatment of women and anybody not conforming to their perverted doctrine, the false usage of the Bible by the KKK in its heyday, the Nazi version of Christianity, Islamic fanatics as well as Jewish/Israeli Zionists and their beliefs. All of these groups firmly believe ( I think ) that they have the right religion and will kill for it, all in 'God's' name. If this isn't perversion, what is?
For me, a person who practices the 'golden rule' of "DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE OTHERS DO UNTO YOU" is a 'religious' person, and like the ancient Persian Master Zarathustra said..."GOOD THOUGHTS, GOOD WORDS, GOOD DEEDS", which if practiced, would lead to a heaven on earth, rather than some mythical place after we pass away.
In my lifetime I have met many atheists and agnostics whom I believe had a better understanding of life and moral principal in dealing with the vicissitudes that we all face, than many religious people I have known. Many religious people also have an understanding and grasp on the meaning of life and have dealt with unexpected changes and calamity quite well.
It all stems from our personal developement in evolving to a higher plane of consciousness where the 'seven deadly sins' really becomes a taboo.
Peace and Harmony
Peaceman, can you give us a reference for the story of Jesus living to be ninety? ...Religion springs forth from the depths of humans. We search for a sense of the meaning of life - all life. Religion can never be destroyed, only perverted. Salaam.
jansvendsen: Very well said! Religion is a tool to control people via the fear factor. Christ was a saint, and when he scolded the 'money lenders' in the temple, he was marked as 'persona non grata' and the Romans were told to get him out of town. He did not 'die on the cross' , but went back to the lamasary in Kum Bum as a teacher and passed away in his 90's.
Too many people have abandoned the Universal Principal of the Brotherhood of Man, and instead follow the false teachers of organized religion. The results are clear. When will they ever learn?
There is no hell, nor heaven. These concepts were made up by church leaders many centuries ago to control people via the fear factor. Religious mumbo-jumbo is, and has been, the cause of great bloodshed and persecution for centuries. Anyone who has the ability to question "authority" can see that religious dogma is an insult to the true Creator of the universe and all who dwell in these billion, endless galaxies. Christ was a saint, but his teachings have been twisted by sick minds hungry for power. Cheney and Bush and Rice et al are of the same ilk. They need to be removed before the world is plunged into a catastrophe that is unimaginable, and will surely destroy the earth.
The religious right is not the least bit "Christian." If they really believed in Christ they would know that they're all going straight to hell!
Religion does not teach people to think clearly and reasonably but to have faith in something or someone regardless of how it appears. Consequently, when our great church leaders say evolution is bunk and creationism is science, many believe without question. If they say God appointed Bush to wreck the cradle of civilisation and kill all that get in the way, then of course that is gospel. When religious leaders say the main problems we face are gays, abortion, and stem cell research, that is taken as truth from above. Right to life is pushed as the only strategy, but after birth, forget them as the rich need the money. Of course the lives of children in our fake warzone do not matter as they are not "Christian", however the ones that are have now been persecuted, but do the religious pay any attention? Real religion can be a great help to a country, but not the kind we seem to have in America, where people are mostly concerned with a luxurious lifestyle, and some are trying to mix up church and state, which is obviously not working.
Isn't it something, how unChristian most supposed Christians have acted in their blind support of this evil and illegal war? I find that most of the Christians I meet are quicker to hate, judge and attack than to love, understand or turn the other cheek.
The hate Christians have won, it seems, and the voices of those of us who love peace have been drowned out completely. You almost have to wonder who these people are worshiping?
They worship idealized mental images of things, not real qualities. There's a word for this.