Gibran's Noor: All sorts of Very Important People got their picture taken at the 2009 Khalil Gibran Awards, but only one came close to transcending the numbing dullness inherent to podium snapshots: Queen Noor al-Hussein, widow of the late King Hussein of Jordan. The Queen kicked off the festivities at the Washington-based Arab American Institute Foundation. (Photo courtesy of the Arab American Institute)
Since 1999, the Washington-based Arab American Institute Foundation --one of the many cedar-like branches of James Zogby's Arab American Institute (yes, the same Zogby, with his brother, who gives you all those polls at election time)--has been bestowing the Khalil Gibran "Spirit of Humanity Awards.
Recipients (individuals or organizations) are meant to represent the famed Lebanese writer's "respect for the dignity of man, his belief in the sanctity of individual freedom, and his universal love of humanity." They've included the Barenboim-Said Foundation created by the great conductor Daniel Barenboim and the Palestinian literary critic and activist Edward Said, as a bridge between Palestinians and Israelis; Reporters Without Borders; Lech Walesa (founder of Poland's Solidarity movement); Muhammad Ali; Rock the Vote; Helen Thomas (who needs no introduction); Sting; and, four years before the Nobel Peace Prize committee followed suit, the Grameen Global Network of microfinancing.
Along the way, some more suspect recipients have also won under one of the award's four or five categories, including Fanie Mae, ExxonMobil ("Award for Corporate Commitment," evidently not to Prince Williams Sound) and the Ford Motor Company.
About 700 people turned up for this year's award ceremony, held last week at the foundation. The winners:
- The Award for Institutional Excellence went to The Marshall Legacy Institute, devoted to countering the effects of land mines globally.
- The Award for International Commitment went to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, the often-maligned (often unfairly) agency that administers Palestinian refugee camps, where 4.6 million refugees live (if you can call it that).
- The Award for Individual Achievement went to Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, who orchestrated the wonderful "Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World," an unprecedented, two-week festival at the Kennedy Center earlier this year.
- The Najeeb Halaby Award for Public Service (named for Queen Noor’s father) went to Elias A. Zerhouni, until September the director of the National Institutes of Health, the $30 billion federal research powerhouse. (Zerhouni is originally from Algeria).
In the United States, we've made considerable progress against all sorts of bigotries and stereotype. One proof of that progress is in the White House today, though he had to overcome his share of slurs down the campaign stretch. But two groups remain unfair game: gays and Arabs. (Imagine how much worse it is to be Arab and gay in an Arab country though. Or in Iran, where gays, according to the compulsively misinformed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, don't exist. Not fun.)
The Arab American Institute deserves its own Khalil Gibran award for so persistently battling those stereotypes. If the battle is ever won, and surely it will be, the Institute should reap top credit.
See Also:
- Gibran Khalil Gibran: Profile of the author of The Prophet
- Commemorating Lebanon's Khalil Gibran
- Khalil Gibran, Prophet of the Self-Help Manual
- Khalil Gibran Excerpts
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