{"id":341232,"date":"2012-06-30T18:23:45","date_gmt":"2012-06-30T16:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/studying-and-living-fraternity-amidst-conflict\/"},"modified":"2024-06-06T12:07:04","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T10:07:04","slug":"studying-and-living-fraternity-amidst-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/studying-and-living-fraternity-amidst-conflict\/","title":{"rendered":"Studying And Living: Fraternity Amidst Conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

I am hurt by the injustice of it all<\/strong> and, since my culture encourages people to respond to violence with violence, I also found this violence within me and would justify it when I saw it in others.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve come to study in Italy at the Sophia University Institute<\/a><\/strong>. I had so many questions. I\u2019m experiencing something new here, something powerful. I took the political direction for my course of study, and I began to enter new surroundings. I discovered, for example, that the principle of fraternity can be a true and proper political category alongside freedom and equality. I\u2019ve understood that fraternity is a choice, an answer that repairs injustice. Here you don\u2019t only study, great importance\u00a0 is given to experience, and the more you live the more you understand what you are studying.<\/p>\n

A few months back, I was enormously shocked by the news that Israel and Palestine had agreed on a prisoner exchange. I had seen it on the Internet that there would be 1 against 1027. It was incredible news! Many of these Palestinians had been in prison for thirty years. I would have desired so much to home in order to celebrate this moment with family and friends. I was really moved. I spoke at length with my fellow students about what was happening in my land and they, who are of different nationalities, feasted with me!<\/p>\n

A few of us went to church and prayed for the freed prisoners and their families. But as we left the church one student said to me: \u201c. . . I pray also for that Israelian prisoner.\u201d I didn\u2019t agree. How could she say such a thing! Exchanging one prisoner for a thousand seemed deeply unjust.<\/p>\n

When I returned home, I took up my books again but was unable to study. I was furious. A thousand thoughts. . . then a question: what is the sense of a theoretical study of fraternity, if I don\u2019t try to experience it? Maybe I should also pray for this one prisoner and his family. . . I had to overcome many things within me, it was difficult, it cost me much, but in the end I managed to really do it with my heart.<\/p>\n

Now, months later I still feel so much gratitude towards those who shared that moment with me, the students and professors at SUI. I\u2019m not merely studying fraternity, but now I\u2019m experiencing it both in my relationship with them and within myself. Samar Bandak<\/strong> \u2013 <\/strong>Jordan\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Source: official website of Sophia University Institute: http:\/\/www.iu-sophia.org<\/a> )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When fraternity goes from being the object of study to a way of living even in the midst of serious conflicts. The testimony of a Jordanian woman studying at Sophia University Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}