No matter where you come from or which language you speak, there is a place for you in Harrisonburg and at 91����Ƶ, and Nasser Alsaadun MA ’17 (education) is living proof of that.

The Iraqi-born educator, who came to the United States in 2008, became the first refugee councilmember in the city’s history when he was elected last fall and began his in January. He says his presence on council sends a clear message that Harrisonburg is diverse and accepting and that local immigrants can feel welcome as a part of the community.

“People can all live in peace and learn from one another—your culture, my culture. We’re all in the same pot,” Alsaadun said. “I think that’s actually a unique thing about this area.”

Through his advocacy work, Alsaadun ensures that the Friendly City lives up to its name as a welcoming place for people of all backgrounds. He volunteers with , a local office of Church World Service that serves and advocates for refugees, asylum seekers, unaccompanied children, and immigrants in the Shenandoah Valley.

He is also a founder and board member of the , a community group that works to make the city more inclusive and supportive for immigrants and newcomers, addressing challenges they face, building relationships with them, and connecting them with resources.

One of those resources is 91����Ƶ’s renowned Intensive English Program (IEP). Alsaadun, who teaches Arabic courses as an at James Madison University and English Language Learner (ELL) classes for Rockingham County Public Schools, often motivates residents to enroll in IEP classes. The program, hosted in 91����Ƶ’s Roselawn Building, helps English language learners from all around the world find their voice and build a better life for themselves. In a typical semester, IEP has 60 to 80 students of varying ages and language skill levels representing 15 to 20 countries.

“91����Ƶ has one of the best English programs in the area,” Alsaadun said. “It has a great reputation with the immigrant community.”

He added that graduates of IEP are highly proficient, professional, and well-prepared to continue their education, not just at 91����Ƶ, but at any university. “From Winchester to Charlottesville, (that program) is the best there is.”

Did you know?
In Harrisonburg City Public Schools, more than 70 languages are spoken by the student population. The No. 1 spoken language isn’t English—it’s Spanish! Source: in the Daily News-Record. Learn more about IEP at .

Escaping danger

Alsaadun grew up in Iraq and graduated from the University of Basrah in 1997 with a bachelor of arts in English. When the Iraq War broke out, he served as an interpreter for the U.S. Army in 2003. Because of his help, he became a target of militia insurgents, who came looking for him. When they couldn’t find him, they kidnapped his father for two days, then tortured and killed him.

Alsaadun and his family fled to Syria and later relocated to Lebanon, where they received refugee status from the United Nations. They arrived in the United States in July 2008 and were resettled by CWS Harrisonburg.

While serving as a temporary instructor for JMU’s foreign language department, Alsaadun started working with the refugee resettlement office and other organizations to welcome newcomers and help refugees adjust to their new life. As he helped connect immigrants to 91����Ƶ’s Intensive English Program, he learned more about the university. He had heard so many success stories about its graduates and decided to enroll. And in 2017, he graduated from 91����Ƶ with a master of arts in education.

It had always been his father’s dream to see him earn a master’s degree, shared Alsaadun, and so it was especially meaningful to him. “I cried,” he said, “because I couldn’t have him there with me seeing that moment.”

‘A different touch’

Since graduating from 91����Ƶ, Alsaadun has continued his studies through courses at JMU and the University of Virginia. He said 91����Ƶ professors are unlike any others he has encountered in his education.

“I was blessed to have professors who recognized and appreciated the gifts I had,” Alsaadun said. “They knew I wasn’t a native English speaker and that I came from a different culture. Some teachers expect you to know everything, but my teachers at 91����Ƶ understood that sometimes you struggle. That kind of understanding is unique to 91����Ƶ.”

In August, while attending a city/91����Ƶ liaison committee meeting as a council representative, he received an email confirming his acceptance into the doctoral program at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. He is now in his first semester, pursuing a PhD of education in curriculum and instruction, and credited 91����Ƶ and its professors for providing the tools and skills that have helped him succeed.

“It’s absolutely a different taste of education,” he said. “The courses at 91����Ƶ have a different touch.”

Alsaadun, now a U.S. citizen with a wife and four children, opened Babylon, a Middle Eastern restaurant and market in Harrisonburg, in 2016. He’s been invited to the White House on two occasions. He met former President Barack Obama in July 2016, in appreciation for “serving the community and being a good role model for refugees” and attended a leadership summit on refugees at the White House that September. He received the Leader of the Year award from Church World Service in 2022.

That’s according to Dr. Lisa Schirch, an professor who has spent considerable time with Iraqis and Afghans—both in America and their countries—and with U.S. military leaders, whom she says are now telling Congress that it must rethink what security looks like.

Schirch returned to her hometown Jan. 25 to deliver ‘s annual Keeney Peace Lecture on “Building Security from the Ground Up: How a Mennonite works with the U.S. military and Iraqi and Afghan community leaders to rethink U.S. strategy.”

The professor of peacebuilding at 91����Ƶ is also executive director of the 3D (Development, Diplomacy, Defense) Security Initiative at its graduate Center for Justice & Peacebuilding. For the last several years, she has been inviting military officials to campus to meet with Iraqi and Afghan students—who have also traveled to Washington, D.C., with her to suggest to lawmakers how the U.S. could better relate to their respective nations.

Suggesting that a map of the world’s worst violence corresponds with a map of its greatest poverty and inequality, Schirch cited a 2002 Bush Administration National Security Strategy: “Including all of the world’s poor in an expanding circle of development—and opportunity—is a moral imperative and one of the top priorities of U.S. international policy.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have expressed support for more diplomacy and attention to causes of global instability, she said, noting that more people currently play in Army bands than serve as diplomats in the U.S. Foreign Service.

But funding is an ongoing issue, added Schirch, a former Fulbright Fellow in Africa who has worked in more than 20 nations and written several books on conflict prevention and peacebuilding. While 60 cents of every American tax dollar are allocated to the military, only half a penny goes toward development projects, such as, for example, schools that could give children a non-extremist education, she said. And the development budget, she pointed out, is in danger of being cut.

“Security doesn’t land in a helicopter,” Schirch said, quoting an Iraqi saying, “it grows from the ground up.” It requires the efforts of both government and civil society, she maintained, reminding her listeners that U.S. government policy in Iraq and Afghanistan has focused almost exclusively on building a state that, in each case, has been corrupt and disliked by its citizens.

In Afghanistan, where civil society is caught in the middle of two unpopular alternatives—the government and the Taliban—thousands of community leaders are working for peace, largely unbeknownst to Americans, according to Schirch. Many Afghans came to the U.S. about 20 years ago to study peacebuilding and, after earning their degrees, returned home to practice their skills at the community level. There, they continue talking to insurgents and Taliban supporters about entering into a peace process, she explained.

One leading Afghan activist, Suraya Sadeed, is pursuing a master’s degree at 91����Ƶ, noted Schirch, who holds her master’s and Ph.D. in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University. She said Sadeed has been building girls’ schools in her native land for 30 years and, after the Taliban rose to power in the 1990s, she did so with their consent after negotiating with their leaders.

A Mennonite who said she considers herself a pacifist, Schirch started attending military conferences in 2007, about the same time she began inviting its representatives to meet Iraqi and Afghan students at 91����Ƶ. How a pacifist can spend so much time with military officials is a recurring question, she acknowledged. But finding common ground with those you don’t agree with is a key principle of active Mennonite peacebuilding, or “practical pacifism,” she asserted, and that is why she can stand with the military and argue for a changed security strategy.

The Keeney Peace Lectureship was established in 1978 by the family of William Sr. and Kathryn Keeney to express appreciation for Bluffton’s influence and to strengthen the continuing peace witness among the community.

Two 91����Ƶ student organizations are co-sponsoring an event meant to challenge the 91����Ƶ and larger community with the issue of economic justice in Israel-Palestine.

J. Daryl and Cindy Byler, Mennonite Central Committee Middle East representatives for Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, and Iran, will speak 8 p.m. Thursday, Mar. 19, in the Common Grounds Coffeehouse in the University Commons.

The couple will focus on facts on the ground following the Israeli offense on Gaza and the larger Israeli occupation, draw connections between U.S. policy and present the need for a morally responsible investment/divestment campaign.

The Bylers will also speak at a forum 3:45-5:15 p.m. Thursday, Mar. 19, in the Strite Conference Room of 91����Ƶ’s Campus Center. They will reflect on MCC’s approach and activities in interfaith bridgebuilding and the challenges they encounter in their work.

Daryl Byler, a 1979 91����Ƶ graduate, is an attorney and former director of MCC’s Washington, D.C., office. He was named 91����Ƶ’s “alumnus of the year” in 1992.

The 91����Ƶ Peace Fellowship and Res Judicata student pre-law group are co-sponsoring Wednesday’s program. Thursday’s forum is co-sponsored by the Anabaptist Center for Religion and Society (ACRS) and the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP).

Admission is free to both events.

A prayer “tent” will be erected on the front campus near Northlawn Residence Hall, and persons are invited to pray in half-hour time blocks from midnight to midnight. Passersby will be invited to offer their own prayers and to tie prayer flags around the vigil site.

Nicholas Stoddard, a Peace Fellowship co-leader, said this Thursday was chosen for its proximity to both the UN’s International Day of Peace and the concurrent International Day of Prayer for Peace on Sept. 21. The event also coincides with a two-week prayer vigil, Sept. 16-30, coordinated by Christian Peace Witness for Iraq (CPWI), an ecumenical organization with ties to the Sojourners community based in Washington, D.C.

“As a faith-based community, we hope to raise our prayers for the Iraqi people and coalition soldiers while also issuing a public plea for a withdrawal of troops and a shift of budget resources to provide for humanitarian assistance,” Stoddard said. “We hope the vigil makes it clear: we oppose this war because of our deep-rooted faith and belief that God

Christian Peacemaker Team worker Tom Fox was eulogized in an on-campus memorial service Wednesday evening, Mar. 15, as an example of active love and nonviolence in a place of protracted conflict.

At the same time, the one-hour service celebrated the thousands of others who are working on behalf of peace around the world and remembering those who continue to suffer as a result of violence everywhere.

More than 300 students, faculty, staff and community persons gathered in Lehman Auditorium to remember Fox and others who have put their lives on the line for the cause of peace in Iraq and other countries.

Human Rights Worker

Fox, 54, was a (CPT) member investigating human rights violations, helping ordinary Iraqi people rebuild their shattered lives and telling the truth to U.S. citizens about the horrors of war. He was taken hostage on Nov. 26, 2005, along with three fellow CPT colleagues, by a group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade.

Fox’s body was found by Iraqi police in western Baghdad on Mar. 9, 2006, with evidence of having been tortured before being shot. The status of the other CPT hostages remains uncertain.

The service opened with a candlelight processional by current students in 91����Ƶ’s (CJP) program and a welcome from 91����Ƶ President Loren Swartzendruber.

Kenneth J. Nafziger, professor of music at 91����Ƶ, led the audience and the 91����Ƶ Chamber Singers in music, including “O Healing River,” “If the War Goes On,” “God of Grace and God of Glory” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

Peace Mission in Iraq

Fox, from Clearbrook, Va., took one semester of graduate work in 91����Ƶ’s graduate-level Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, studying “strategic nonviolence” with Lisa Schirch, associate professor of conflict studies, to prepare himself for returning to his peace mission in Iraq. Schirch visited Fox in Iraq last summer and stayed in close touch with him through e-mails.

Dr. Schirch offered sample readings from Fox’s communications while a series of photos were projected on a screen of the CPT worker’s activities in the Middle East.

“Tom was my student,” Schirch said. “He was dedicated to praying for and working for peace. He wanted to tell the world what was happening in Iraq. He would want us to plead to God today to send down healing waters and wash the blood off of the sand.

“Tom would want us to continue our fervent prayers for the remaining CPT hostages James Loney, Harmet Sooden and Norman Kember, for journalist Jill Carroll, for the Iraqi people who have suffered so much and for the U.S. soldiers who are our neighbors from here in the U.S.,” she said.

Memorial Fund

Guest books were made available for audience members to sign and offer personal reflections and condolences. These will be forwarded to Fox’s CTP colleagues, who will in turn convey them to Fox’s two college-aged children.

A Tom Fox Memorial Fund for CJP has been established to support the continuation of Fox’s work through the training of additional persons in peacebuilding, nonviolent action and advocacy for social justice.

More information is available by contacting Bonnie Price Lofton, CJP director of development, at 540-432-4234; e-mail: Bonnie.Lofton@emu.edu.

Some 70 91����Ƶ students, faculty, staff and community persons gathered Monday evening, Jan. 30 on Thomas Plaza of the Campus Center for a second prayer vigil on behalf of four kidnapped Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) members in Iraq and others on all sides of the conflict there.

The four CPTers

A former student in the (CJP) at 91����Ƶ is among the four hostages currently being held in Iraq by a group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade.

The American, Tom Fox, 54, from Clearbrook, Va., took the “Strategic Nonviolence” class at CJP with , associate professor of peacebuilding at 91����Ƶ, in spring 2004 and has been working in Iraq with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CTP) for the past year and a half.

91����Ƶ held a candlelight vigil for the four CTP hostages Wednesday evening, Nov. 30, on the Campus Center plaza. More than 60 persons attended the vigil as a symbol of solidarity and commitment to a non-violent resolution.

Those gathered held lighted candles and listened to information about the four abductees, spent time in silent reflection followed by a period of prayer and the singing of the hymn, “O Healing River.”

“Tom learned about other non-violent heroes in this course,” Dr. Schirch told the group. “He believes that as peacebuilders, we need to take the same risks as military people.”

Fox, a Quaker, has worked with CPT in partnership with Iraqi human rights organizations to promote peace. In Iraq, he sought a more complete understanding of Islamic cultural richness. He is committed to telling the truth to U.S. citizens about the horrors of war and its effects on ordinary Iraqi civilians and families as a result of U.S. policies and practices.

“Fox has devoted his life to working for peace,” according to CJP staff member William Goldberg, who helped organize the vigil along with Schirch and 91����Ƶ campus pastor Brian Martin Burkholder. He noted that Fox is scheduled to speak at 91����Ƶ about his peace work in mid-February.

At his web blog, Fox quoted a Quaker theologian: “Be patterns, be examples in every country, place, or nation that you visit, so that your bearing and life might communicate with all people. Then you’ll happily walk across the earth to evoke that of God in everybody. So that you will be seen as a blessing in their eyes and you will receive a blessing from that of God within them.”

More information on Fox is available at .com.

For updates on the hostage situation, go to .

It’s still cool, even wintry-like at times, but change is happening – slowly, quietly, surely.

Around our house, daffodils and tulips force their way through the crusty mulch, testing conditions, deciding whether to thrust forth with confidence or retreat to whence they came.

Fat robins cavort in our yard, breaking forth in song one minute, shivering the next.

The calendar declares it, the great outdoors seconds it – Spring is in the air.

Indoors, an amaryllis plant that I potted at Thanksgiving is starting to put on a Technicolor display. I start one each November in hopes of the large colorful blooms cheering up the often bleak month of January.

This time, nothing seemed to happen in spite of lavishing extra attention on the dormant bulb. Christmas came and went with no indication of green shoots or a flower stalk imminent.

Several times I came close to pitching the stubborn plant, then recanted. Apparently the contrary plant decided to give up growing for Lent, only to strut its stuff for Easter.

Stubborn flowering plants act a lot like people, but we shouldn’t give up on them either.

I also purchase an Easter lily each year, enjoy its beauty and fragrance, then plant it outside and watch for it to spring up again the following year.

An obstinate amaryllis at the Bishop residence waited until Easter to break forth with joy.
Photo by Jim Bishop

Easter weekend comes especially early this year, at a time when the weather remains unpredictable and uncertain.

It’s a time of promise, of newness, of renewal and hope. The long dark nights and desolation of winter are passing. But wintertime’s hibernation and dormancy spell is necessary in order for new life to burst forth again.

This old guy still looks forward to getting an Easter basket, joining with other family members in searching indoors and outside for the wicker container laden not so much with chocolate goodies as with small, useful everyday items. Finding this hidden treasure is half the fun.

Easter encompasses all that life is meant to be in its fullness.

In contrast, humanity seems intent on pursuing a path that leads to destruction – inflicting pain and suffering on each other to get what we want or to impose our will on others, whether on an individual level or broader scope.

I think of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and especially in Iraq, now two years old and counting.

Does Iraq have any connection with Easter?

I think so.

The Easter story is a violent one, full of trauma, injustice and death. One ends joyfully, triumphantly, the other . . . well, the verdict has yet to be returned.

We can use violent means to try to bring about change, between people and between countries, but it won’t change people’s minds or hearts. Only genuine love can do that.

Boundless love, reconciliation, life beyond the grave – that’s the message of Easter, if we are open to hearing and accepting it.

But, love our enemies? Here and now? Maybe the person next to you that you can’t stand, that’s a possibility. But our perceived enemies half way around the world? How absurb, even though the One who Easter is all about called us to do precisely that.

The cross, used by the powerful to suck the life out of the powerless, became the instrument that changed the world.

In the shadow of that empty cross, we can fully live – now and forever.

Jim Bishop is public information officer at 91����Ƶ. He can be contacted at .

The at 91����Ƶ will host Peggy Gish, an Athens, Ohio, native who recently returned from her fourth trip to Iraq, working with .

She will speak about her experiences 8 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 8, in the Coffeehouse located on ground floor of the University Commons.

Gish, 63, has been in Iraq for a total of 13 months in the past two years. The CPT team in Iraq has worked to reduce violence, promote fair treatment of Iraqi detainees and to witness the conditions of life under the U.S. occupation.

Gish

Under the rubric, “Remembering the Cost, Mourning the Violence,” a thousand small white grave markers are occupying a portion of the lawn in front of the 91����Ƶ Campus Center Nov. 8-12.

The crosses were erected by JustVoices, a group of about a dozen local citizens and students committed to nonviolent action, to remind the 91����Ƶ campus and larger community of the human cost of war.

According to one of the organizers, Danny Malec, the 1,000 white markers represent the deaths of over one thousand U.S. soldiers and civilians in Iraq. Each of these 1,000 crosses, crescents and stars also represents at least 13 Iraqi citizens; thirteen humans, friends, co-workers, students, soldiers, and civilians who have died as a result of the U.S. action in Iraq, he noted.

Malec, a student in 91����Ƶ’s Conflict Transformation Program, said the idea for the grave markers came from Katherine P. (Katie) Resendiz, another CTP student, noting that “about 30 community people made and painted the crosses.”

Constructing the markers, all fashioned from discarded wood, “was a moving experience,” he said.

Signs posted at several points surrounding the markers invite persons to “imagine 14 of your friends standing around each cross, crescent or star. Take some time to experience the loss yourself, and then to mourn the loss for the world that will never know these people.”

JustVoices has been actively engaging people on issues of justice, nonviolence and social action for nearly a year in the Shenandoah Valley. The 91����Ƶ campus display represents the culmination of a four-month series of weekly protests on the actions in Iraq. Each week, a group has gathered on Court Square in downtown Harrisonburg to mourn over people covered in white linen, representing the unreported deaths in Iraq and the unpublicized return of bodies to the U.S.

The week-long display will end with a period of reflection and prayer on the Campus Center plaza 5 p.m. Friday (Nov. 12). All are welcome.

“The protests generated a variety of responses from the community, and we hope that this display elicits the same level of response here on campus,” Malec said. “I’ve seen people walking slowly among the markers, taking pictures and standing in quiet reflection.

“We’re open to help facilitate discussion on- and off-campus,” he added.

As religious pacifists, we have grieved deeply – with the rest of the world – over the images of dehumanization that have emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison. We want to avert our eyes from those images and tell ourselves that these horrendous abuses did not really happen.

But they did happen. And, anguished as we are, we must face those realities. And what shall be our response?

The powers that be are preparing to investigate and mete out punishments to individuals deemed to have been involved. And indeed, individuals must be called upon to take responsibility for their own actions – even in war. The Nuremberg Principles and others have established that. At the same time, many signs suggest that a whole system up the chain of command not only permitted, but encouraged harsh treatment of Iraqi and Afghan prisoners.

Take, for example, Pfc. Lynndie England, the young woman whose face has appeared on some of these photos of abuse. She will be prosecuted and most likely punished for her offensive behavior.

But does this behavior make Private England an evil person? From all reports, she was a fun loving, adventuresome young person not much different from all of our daughters and sisters. As people of faith, we choose to believe that within Lynndie England, as within all persons, resides the spark of the divine.

The same goes for each of the Iraqi prisoners in those photos. Regardless of their histories – and reports suggest at least some were just innocents scooped up during military sweeps – we choose to believe that the divine presence lives within each of them, too. Have some of them done evil things? Perhaps so. Given the absence of fair trials, we don’t really know. But even if they have, we cannot think of them as evil persons any more than we can think of Lynndie England as an evil person.

And that’s where the logic of war becomes so grievous.

We label each other as “terrorist” or “infidel,” or “good guy” and “bad guy,” with the assumption that it is appropriate to kill the “bad guy.” If we arrogate the right to kill, it is inevitable that many other dehumanizing abuses will ensue.

Before the United States launched “the optional war” in Iraq, practitioners of nonviolence were advocating concrete alternatives that would have sought to depose Saddam Hussein without war. One plan called for a massive humanitarian assistance program to the Iraqi people while launching a campaign to declare Hussein a war criminal and to carry out even more rigorous arms inspections throughout the country. Of course, many of us nonviolent activists were dismissed as being hopelessly naive.

But is the logic of warfare and occupation really wise? Does it really make sense that we can bomb neighborhoods, storm into people’s homes at night, imprison thousands in degrading conditions without charge, and then assume that these people will love us? Where does the greater naivete lie? Do we really believe that we have created a safer and more stable world because we launched a war in Iraq?

We worked with a relief agency among farmer refugees in Vietnam for five years during the war there. Our home was just five miles from the village of My Lai, where more than 400 villagers were slaughtered on a March morning in 1968. My Lai was that war’s Abu Ghraib. Unhappily, we learned that the massacre in My Lai, while possibly the largest of its kind in that war, was far from an isolated case.

Do we blame the individual soldiers who participated in those war crimes? Again, there must be personal accountability and responsibility. But those soldiers were forced to serve among a people whose language and customs they barely knew. Without intimate knowledge of the society, they could not know who was friend and who was enemy. So many became fearful, if not contemptuous, of all Vietnamese people. Little wonder that atrocities took place. It is the logic of war. It is naive to think it will be otherwise.

Today, most US officials and commentators, while condemning the abuses revealed in the Abu Ghraib prison, speak in terms of finding ways to fix the system so these abuses will not happen again.

The need is deeper. We need to understand that if we choose the option of war, abuses will inevitably follow. It is the very nature of war. Indeed, war itself is abuse.

Earl Martin and Pat Hostetter Martin worked with the Mennonite Central Committee in peace and development programs for 25 years. Ms. Martin is now codirector the Summer Peacebuilding Institute of the 91����Ƶ in Harrisonburg, Va.