I've just spent an hour or so learning about the Understanding Campaign. It's an interesting idea, based on an appealingly simple premise.
In their words, "The Understanding Campaign wants everyone in the world to read just one word of Arabic." (Of course they don't mean only one word and no more, but let's not get tangled up that kind of analysis.) If i understand them correctly, i think they're suggesting something not only unobjectionable, but, as a speaker of the university prestige dialect might say: "positively counter-hegemonic".
After reading their site, listening to interviews, watching videos, and otherwise attempting to see the campaign in context, i would put it this way: the implication (and i think they're right, BTW) is that, basically, if lots of people everywhere, but especially in the U.S. and English-speaking countries, learn the Arabic word for "understanding", then we would be one small, but concrete step closer to a world free from conflicts based on ignorance and fear.
Lovely, you might say. Ok, but the reason i'm staying up past my bedtime to share this pleasant little discovery is that the Understanding Campaign is actually at a crucial point.
The founders are serious about making their nice idea a reality. Specifically, they want to facilitate a literary exchange with university students in Iraq, and so they have engaged with Kickstarter (which i hadn't heard of before but sounds awesome), a "funding platform for creative projects" — you can read about it for yourself, but it strikes me as similar in spirit to Proudhon's economic ideas.
In accordance with the Kickstarter process, a group proposes a project and sets a dollar amount that would allow it to go forward, then they set a date by which they think they can convince enough people to pledge that much money. But no money changes hands unless they are successful! (It's a sensible way to run things, because it allows people to pledge funding to anything that they think is cool, with no risk that their money will go to a project that never gets off the ground).
The Understanding Campaign has received 242 pledges that tally up to about 92% of its funding goal. However, as of right now the campaign has less than 63 hours left to reach its goal before the deadline (Thursday afternoon).
So i'm writing this to say: i think the Understanding Campaign is a cool idea and that their project should be given a chance to go ahead. They want to print some stickers and exchange books and ideas between North America and the Middle East; it won't cost a lot of money to get started, but it will take some (their goal is $10,000 USD).
People who pledge get stuff, too. I'm getting a T-shirt.
It shouldn't be too hard to get pledges for the last few hundred dollars in the next couple of days, but it would suck if after all they've done so far, they're left with just a good idea and some new friends. That's not nothing, of course — in a way, that's the point: good ideas and new friends are great things — but the people behind the campaign are very close to starting something far greater.
فهم
That's the word. Spread it around.
