the Friend INDEPENDENT QUAKER JOURNALISM SINCE 1843

CONTENTS – VOL 168 NO 26 3-5 News 3 Jean Zaru wins justice award Sue Glover Frykman 4 Call to recognise peace heroes 5 Facing the equality challenge Clare B Dimyon 6 Serving our Society Alick Munro and David Robson 7 Christian discipline? Ruth Milne 8-9 Letters 10-11 What canst we say? Peace education for the twenty-first century Gerald Hewitson 12 Acting with integrity Jan Arriens 13 Quaker Meeting for Worship on North Ronaldsay Alison Elliman 14-15 It does what it says on the tin Reg Edwards 16 q-eye: witness 17 Friends & Meetings

Cover image: A Quaker enjoys the fresh air on the cliff at Westray, Orkney and quote from Advices & Queries 17. Photo: Jennifer Batten. www.flickr.com/photos/jen-the-wren/. See page 13. Images on this page: Leaveners annual general meeting, 18 to 20 June at Northfield Meeting House in Birmingham. Photos by: Dora Jackson, Lleucu Haf Evans and Roisin Brenan.

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the Friend, 25 June 2010 News

Jean Zaru wins justice award

Jean at the award ceremony. Photo: Sue Glover Frykman.

‘I

n a part of the world that is often painted in different shades of violence, Jean Zaru is a beacon of hope. She is an advocate for dialogue between religions and is, as a lone female church leader in the Middle East, a role model for women’s leadership. During her entire life, Jean Zaru has chosen nonviolence to resist the oppression under which she lives; nonviolence because it exposes and challenges the structural violence on all levels. Nonviolence because it makes the oppressors realise that they, too, are victims of the violence they impart. Nonviolence because Jean Zaru believes in the human being, the entire human being.’

This declaration was made at the announcement of the award of the 2010 Anna Lindh Memorial Fund Prize to Palestinian Quaker Jean Zaru.

Six members of Sweden Yearly Meeting attended the prize-giving ceremony in Stockholm on 10 June.

On introducing Jean Zaru, the former archbishop of Sweden, KG Hammar, referred to Jean’s life and steadfast work for peace through nonviolent means in Palestine and her home town of Ramallah as being like an olive tree that refused to be uprooted because it belonged in that soil and would bear fruit there. In her acceptance speech, Jean stressed the importance of never giving up, since that in effect meant giving in. In his rounding off address to Jean, Jan Eliasson (a former foreign minister of Sweden) said that security was not to be found behind walls but through and among neighbours. In this context he felt that the important triad of peace – development – human rights formed the cornerstone of Jean’s work.

Jean Zaru told the Friend: ‘My award was given for my consistent struggle to resist violence and oppression in nonviolent ways, the respect for human dignity and human rights. Also my book Occupied with nonviolence, a Palestinian woman speaks was translated to Swedish and the committee told me my work was in the spirit of Anna Lindh.’

The Anna Lindh Memorial Fund primarily supports women and young people who work in the spirit of Anna Lindh (the former foreign minister who was murdered in Sweden on 11 September 2003). They are people who in their daily lives have the courage to fight indifference, prejudice, oppression and injustices in order to promote a good life for all people in an environment marked by respect for human rights.

Sue Glover Frykman

We will publish extracts from Jean’s acceptance speech next week.

the Friend, 25 June 2010

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