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The questions we need to be asking about Islamic State

http://bit.ly/1Tsz4mm

The questions we need to be asking about Islamic State

December 6, 2015

The Sunday Telegraph

AS ISIS peddles conspiracy marketing that they are the masterminds behind the recent spate of all terrorist attacks, another conspiracy of silence abounds in our western alliance.

In western conversations, we shine a light on the heated issue of where will the ISIS “menace” strike next.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull reminded “Australians to be aware that a terrorist incident on our soil remains likely”, despite his calm and calculated reassurances.

But we don’t shine a light on the taboo questions that explain how ISIS does not thrive in a vacuum, but is dependent on a supply chain.

We need to reject the simplistic narrative about ISIS as a malevolent cancer that can be surgically amputated.

A bolder set of questions will enlighten us that many of our allies have blood on their hands and are hypocritical for condemning ISIS publicly but aiding them privately.

Let’s shed light on who is funnelling ISIS with funds and weapons. The oil-rich Gulf states of Saudi Arabia and Qatar have supplied ammunition and salaries to the Free Syrian Army in 2012.

They should have known the ancient Arab axiom, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and that ISIS would ultimately confiscate these weapons. Ironically, ISIS propaganda videos have flaunted American weapons which they now point at the manufacturing country.

Let’s shed light on which border is allowing ISIS into Syria. The infiltrations are mostly via Turkey which has allowed ‘jihadists’ and weapons across its border.

We need to shed light on who is funding the Jihadis fighting for Islamic State, Joseph Wakim says.

It has also hosted the launch of ISIS missiles into Kobane in Syria.

Therefore, we need to be asking why Turkey has aided and abetted ISIS supply chain.

Let’s shed light on who is buying the $50 million per month of Syrian crude oil that ISIS have seized. It appears that middlemen smuggle the oil to Turkey, Iran and even the Syrian government.

Let’s shed light on why the US President vows to ‘degrade’ before he destroys ISIS. It suggests that ISIS is serving some purpose in weakening the Syrian army and destabilising the Syrian government.

If they are as evil and threatening as the US rhetoric purports, then surely they need to be urgently obliterated, not gradually disarmed.

This may explain why the Russian jets apparently achieved in one week what the USA failed to achieve in a year of anti-ISIS bombings in Syria.

Let’s shed light on why ISIS have not vowed to rescue their Sunni brothers in Gaza against Israel.

Instead, we see ISIS propaganda threaten the ‘tyrants of Hamas’ with ‘the rule of sharia’. If ISIS genuinely cared about protecting its Muslim brothers from non-believers, Palestinians should be high on the list to be rescued rather than to be threatened.

If they are as evil and threatening as the US rhetoric purports, then surely they need to be urgently obliterated, not gradually disarmed.

Let’s shed light on why the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not actively accommodated the Syrian refugees.

Surely, it would make more sense that the predominantly Sunni Syrians seek citizenship in Saudi Arabia which already shares the Arab proximity, Arabic language, Sunni faith, and recognisable qualifications.

Saudi Arabia is not a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees and claims to oppose refugee status to these Syrians ‘to ensure their safety and dignity’.

It appears that the Syrian exodus prefers the prospect of distant European citizenship than nearby Saudi foreign labour.

When we shine a light on these darker tunnels that feed ISIS, we replace fear with facts.

 

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A family’s story of love, hope and courage

http://www.weekendnotes.com/what-my-daughters-taught-me-book-review/

1 December 2015

A family’s story of love, hope and courage

Amy Basha

Joseph Wakim‘s book, “What My Daughters Taught Me” is a moving memoir about raising his three young daughters alone in Sydney, after his beloved wife Nadia passed away from cancer in 2003. I was captivated from the moment I started reading the book, Wakim’s language is very vivid and I began to get lost in his world, always a sign that I’ve started a compelling read.

While reading this book I gained the perspective of a father who had three young girls to raise on his own. He faced judgement from others, many people telling him to remarry, that he wouldn’t be able to raise his girls on by himself.

He pushed these comments aside and stayed true to his heart, raising his daughters with love, strength and courage and lots of humour thrown in for a father raising three girls. Wakim does not sugar coat the experience, going into the details of the sometimes exasperating event of getting three girls ready for school on time, working full time, even making runs to the store to buy sanitary napkins for his daughters.

As a female reader, I really respected his viewpoint that after observing his three daughters as they grew up and seeing them communicate as teens, “uninhibited in sharing their fears and hopes, their likes and dislikes… always swapping seats to view life from different angles. Their definition of strength was based on honesty, not victory.”

Wakim was able to see the strength of women’s ability to talk and communicate, where he found the male mentors in his life saw it as a sign of weakness to talk about feelings or to talk too much.

He saw how much he could learn from the way women communicate. One of the best things about reading is seeing life from the author’s viewpoint, and reading this memoir taught me about seeing life from a father’s view raising his daughters, a window we don’t often get to see into. What My Daughters Taught Me is an eloquently written honest memoir about love, resilience, compassion and courage in one family’s life.

It is a great read for the holidays and helps us to appreciate the time we do have with our loved ones.

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Peers vital to turning troubled teens from jihad

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/peers-vital-to-turning-troubled-teens-from-jihad/story-fni0ffsx-1227558178885

http://m.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-path-of-least-resistance-produces-least-results-in-fighting-radicalisation/story-fnihsr9v-1227557973356?from=google_rss#load-story-comments

http://bit.ly/1jLv2Kf

Herald Sun and Courier Mail, 6 October 2015

 

Path of least resistance produces least results in fighting radicalisation

THE gnashing of teeth over another radicalised teenager and another innocent fatality has triggered questions on how this could have been averted. While Strike Force Fellow rewinds the video footage in this critical incident investigation, authority figures rewind the recent years to see how this angry kid escaped their radars.

These authorities include police, politicians, imams and professionals who work with youth. Too often, the incubation takes place out of their gaze in the darkness of a bedroom and the glow of a laptop, where one beckoning voice to take up arms is amplified, while voices of reason are drowned out.

The counter-radicalisation authorities have knocked on many doors but they are the doors of least resistance and have produced the least results.

Ministers visiting respected imams have produced many meetings, consultations and photographs. But breaking bread together has not broken the radicalisation pathway.

These imams are often locked up in offices, late at night, holding committee meetings, planning religious events and fielding media questions. Like clergy in other faiths, they are more likely to be sitting at a boardroom table than sitting opposite an angry teenager who refuses to pray at the mosque.

ISIS recruitment videos have been “successful” because they use Western youth as their beckoning mouthpieces, appealing in English to their peers that they understand their isolation: “For all my brothers living in the West, I know how you feel … you feel depressed … the cure for the depression is jihad.”

ISIS recruitment videos have been “successful” because they use western youth as their beckoning mouthpieces, appealing in English to their peers that they understand their isolation.

The young recruiters also tell their vulnerable targets not to listen to their imams or their parents. Hence, the youth are less likely to pray in the traditional mosques.

Community engagement with Muslim elders renders a similar result. Having been involved in these honorary roles for more than 25 years, we could point bureaucrats in the right direction and we could organise forums but we are unlikely to be personally acquainted with the youth in question.

Consulting with social workers and youth workers is a step closer to the grassroots but the teenagers in these environments have at least broken their social isolation and hear a diversity of voices. The youth on dangerous pathways are less likely to attend the PCYC or sports clubs but they may be in their social neighbourhood.

The suggestion by Attorney-General George Brandis that school teachers could be trained to “spot a jihadi” oversimplifies a complex pathway that is too often clandestine. Memos could be issued about this “de-radicalisation in schools strategy” but it risks creating false alarms and Islamophobia in school grounds, while missing other forms of radicalisation such as white supremacy. Engaging with all these adult groups who understand their responsibility to collaborate with police and politicians is the well-worn path but the path to radicalised youth may require detouring off these smooth surfaces.

When authorities intercept a teenager on this radicalisation path, there is often moral panic about homegrown jihadis and the threat that this dangerous disease may be contagious. But that situation presents a perfect opportunity to learn about the pathway from an “expert”. Which websites did they visit? What were they promised? Who are their recruiters? Such a person could be galvanised and later deployed as the frontline of defence in the grassroots and cyberspace resistance against radicalisation.

The defecting and disillusioned jihadis who have renounced ISIS are the true “experts” whose first-hand testimony from behind bars could be recorded as a counter-narrative. When isolated youth key in trigger words in the search engine of their computers, this pop-up video could automatically appear, from youth to youth, warning their peers about the three-dimensional reality, compared with the two-dimensional rhetoric.

These credible counter-narrative videos could refer to the imprisonment resulting from breaking the foreign fighters legislation.

They can inoculate other vulnerable youth against this dead-end street that was sold as a path to paradise. Youth peers are more likely to derail the radicalisation pathway by planting seeds of doubt and creating opportunities to offer non-violent alternatives to redressing isolation and anger.

This may include sports groups, political parties, prayer groups, social justice groups and even expert work in de-radicalisation.

In my first job as a street worker with runaway youth, my most effective outreach was done by former street kids whose understanding of the plight and emotions was lifesaving.

In my book What My Daughters Taught Me, I explain how teenagers have so much to teach – if we open our ears and listen. By helping me to become a better widowed parent with mutual honesty and respect, I did not need to discover any dark secrets second-hand.

Youth are a fountain of wisdom, waiting to be heard.

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If we treat people as outsiders, they become outsiders

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/if-we-treat-people-as-outsiders-they-become-outsiders-20151004-gk0sel.html

http://bit.ly/1L1yDL0

 

If we treat people as outsiders, they become outsiders

October 4, 2015

Anti-Muslim vitriol plays into the hands of radicalisation recruiters.

When an incident is imbued with a single drop of Islam, it apparently explains everything, and blinds us from asking the right questions.

We are so hasty to roll out the loaded labels, such as “terrorist” and “gunman”, even when referring to a 15-year-old boy. If Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar was a gun-wielding white teenager in school uniform, rather than a brown teenager in a black robe, would we have labelled him a mixed-up kid with mental problems or a radicalised, cold-blooded terrorist?

If a white teenager had opened fire inside a mosque, would we have labelled him an angry misguided youth?

If we are serious in wanting to break this cycle of violence and acts of terror, we need to stop using dehumanising labels and stop absolving ourselves by  shifting blame to Islam.

The complex reality is that many factors line up to trigger such violent acts, including broken families, mental health, perceived lack of alternatives, current circumstances, loneliness, detachment, exposure to violent videos and a twisted moral compass that defines heroism as a violent means towards a rewarding end. These are the push factors that recruiters exploit, especially if the recruit is vulnerable and lacks a good parent.

The pull factors include the lure of adventure, power, belonging, respect, weapons and rewards in paradise. They glorify acts of “warriors” and encourage copycat behaviour.

Too often, the “go to” people for deradicalisation have been community elders, established imams and elected presidents. But the real “experts” on this issue are the youth and their peers, who are more likely to understand and circumvent the cycle.

Youth peers are more likely to derail the radicalisation pathway by planting seeds of doubt and offering other pathways towards redressing injustices. These might include youth groups, political parties, fundraising for charities and letter writing.

Islamophobia might inadvertently feed into the recruitment propaganda, with predators reminding their targets: “We told you that they hate you, you are not welcome, you will never be one of them. Come home to us, come join your brothers and sisters where you will feel welcome, loved and honoured.”

Islamophobia and bombardment with hate messages communicating that Australia does not trust Muslims push “them” to the margins.

Our self-appointed vigilantes should stop giving oxygen to these lethal messages online and on talkback. Stop pushing people over the edge. Stop pushing people to denounce every crime committed by Muslims. Stop pushing people to feel that they are collectively guilty until proven innocent. Stop pushing people towards radicalisation and towards the Islamic State recruitment propaganda. If we treat people as outsiders, they become outsiders.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was keen to point out that venting at Muslims was not the solution to radicalised teenagers, as it could, ironically, be one of the causes.

“We must not vilify or blame the entire Muslim community … our absolutely necessary partners in combating this type of violent extremism.” Indeed, Muslim youth could be our frontline of defence.

This act of leadership was necessary, given the virulent online commentary about deporting Muslims, blocking the 12,000 Syrian refugees, and banning the religion. Any Muslim reading these rants may realise that they reinforce the message of the radicalisation recruiters.

NSW Premier Mike Baird is correct that radicalisation is a global issue and we need to remain open to ideas.

For a start, radicalisation and violent extremism have been treated as a national security issues by federal bureaucracies in Australia. In other countries, radicalisation is treated as a social issue, to be redressed from the ground up, in local neighbourhoods, using peer-to-peer influence as the frontline “weapon”.

At a community-initiated forum on radicalisation last Tuesday, youth, police and community leaders pooled their collective experiences to understand the cycle in order to break the cycle.

We recognise there is no one pathway to radicalisation, and Muslims have no monopoly, given the prevalence of white supremacists.

Hence, there is a need to build resistance and resilience among youth against the predators and recruiters.

The critical incident investigation by NSW Police, Strike Force Fellow, is yet to determine the motivation of the gun-wielding teenager. Just because a person chooses to pray at a mosque, or any place of worship, does not render that place a breeding ground of radicalisation. On the contrary, the Parramatta mosque willingly opened its doors, because it seeks the same solution as the rest of society.

But speculation based solely on religion offers no solutions. And it could perpetuate the problem.

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Syrian conflict proving to be an international, not civil, war

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-syrian-conflict-proving-to-be-an-international-not-civil-war/story-fnihsr9v-1227518301884

http://bit.ly/1LWw4Mz

Opinion: Syrian conflict proving to be an international, not civil, war

September 9, 2015

The Courier-Mail

FOR more than three years many voices, including my own, have warned about the Arab Spring turning sour, the morphing of the anti-Assad forces in Syria from pro-democracy to pro-theocracy, the leaking of Western weapons into the wrong hands and the leaking of foreign fighters from Australia.

The Australian Government was twice visited by peace activist Mother Agnes Miriam who advocated Mussalaha – a 10-point plan towards reconciliation within Syria. Voices such as hers and mine were criticised for daring to question the dominant and simplistic narrative of the Arab Spring, but still we cautioned this was not a Syrian civil war, but an international war involving mercenaries and jihadists, where some stakeholders were speaking peace above the table but funnelling weapons and funds under it.

The concerns behind the warnings have materialised. The proof is in the graphic images of human suffering and Europeans opening their borders to a refugee flood.

Here, Australia’s border protection regime has served to dehumanise those seeking refuge on our shores. We have been conditioned to not see past the boats. The faces, names and stories of those inside the boats are obscured. But when a photo from Europe of a dead Syrian child washed up on a Turkish beach makes all the front pages, the dehumanised are re-humanised and we are suddenly outraged.

Whether it is the emblematic pictures of the drowned toddler, Aylan Kurdi, or a father, Abdul Halim Attar, a Palestinian refugee from Yarmouk in Syria, selling pens on a Beirut street, why are we suddenly shocked by these images when we have been warned about this for years? Yet suddenly we have a humanitarian catastrophe in Syria. Suddenly, ISIS is too dangerous and we need to intervene more. Suddenly, the asylum seekers may be genuine and need to be accommodated.

Perhaps Germany’s open arms have shown up our clenched fists when it comes to the treatment of these asylum seekers? Perhaps Pope Francis’s call for each European parish to “take in one family” has revealed the moral dilemma now facing our Australian Catholic “Captain”?

By assisting the US in air strikes in Syria, we may be compounding the problem we are ostensibly now seeking to redress. Did our military intervention in neighbouring Iraq bring about democracy and peace, or sow seeds for more bloodshed? Can we guarantee that more innocent Syrian civilians will not be killed in the crossfire?

Rather than increasing the area of our bombing and stopping the boats, we should stop the causes of the wars that cause the boats. We should be asking whose borders are allowing ISIS fighters and their weapons to “leak” into Syria? We should be asking who in the West and elsewhere is buying the oil and looted antiquities sold by ISIS.

Instead of (or as well as) debating about our refugee intake, we should be pressing the wealthy Middle East Gulf states, which aided and abetted the armed opposition to the Syrian Government, to take in their fair share of Syrians as well.

Joseph Wakim, a founder of the Australian Arabic Council, is a freelance writer

 

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My Child Magazine: What my daughters taught me

 http://www.mychildmagazine.com.au/blog/what-my-daughters-taught-me

http://bit.ly/1PWitpa

My Child Magazine

What my daughters taught me

No tea leaves could have predicted that Joseph Wakim would raise his daughters alone.

August 26, 2015

Once upon a time I lived in my hometown of Melbourne with my young family: my beautiful wife Nadia and our three little girls, Grace, Michelle and Joy. Ours was a house of music, dancing and laughter. And, as Lebanese Christians of the Maronite Church, ours was a house of faith. I was the hardworking king of the Dad-pun, and Nadia the ever-calm domestic queen. After all, we were ‘crowned’ during our marriage ceremony to have authority over our mini-heavenly kingdom of home and family.

After a career in psychology and social work, I was completing a Master of Business degree in the hope of becoming a better breadwinner. Nadia, a graphic designer, was studying to become a teacher and she taught at the Arabic Saturday school. We were both changing professions and pursuing our dreams. We loved and were loved. We were happy.

We dreamed of travelling together, making music together, even having more children.

But Nadia’s worst fear found its way into her bosom. She privately applied positive thinking that the small lump was normal during breast-feeding. In our culture, the C-word was unmentionable. It was as if by merely evoking the name cancer, we were stepping on the tail of this sleeping monster. By the time Nadia was diagnosed with this ‘death sentence’, it had reached her womb and our dreams crumbled. We clung to what we had and who we had like a life-boat in a stormy sea. My arms became my children’s life jacket.

From singing and dancing on our timber floors, our children learned to whisper and tip-toe as mummy’s medication meant that she needed silence. From going to mummy for their everyday wants and needs, I ushered them to my bosom, turning on the valves in my heart to make up for their mother’s heart that slowly stopped beating.

It was suddnely time to progress as a parent from an L-plater to a P-plater, but without an experienced driver by my side. I pretended to know exactly what I was doing.

As I rushed the children to school (and myself to work) every morning, Grace and Michelle quickly learnt to be self-sufficient. I only helped them with their school ties, but like most men I could only do this while standing behind them as if it were around my own neck, not while facing them.

Little Joy needed more help. Grace taught me how to tie Joy’s hair in a ponytail and secure it with a hair tie. It took me a while to realise that this morning routine was faster if I put the elastic around my wrist in preparation, rather than trying to reach for it with one hand while holding Joy’s hair in place with the other.

To my surprise and relief, this did not cut off my circulation and my hand did not turn purple as my mother had once warned. In time, I also learnt that the ponytail looked smarter if I tied it high on her crown; too low and it seemed to sag with gravity as the day progressed.

This was not information I could glean from textbooks. It was more like rock climbing up a cliff face on the Discovery channel—there was no time to look down and I was scared of heights.

‘Dad!’ echoed Joy from the valley below. ‘It’s not straight!’

I pulled on her ponytail as if it was my climbing rope.

‘Ouch!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Straightening it?’ I guessed.

I stood behind her, with my head above hers, and looked into the bathroom mirror—which she was too short to look into without standing on tiptoe. Sure enough, this morning’s ponytail was slightly off-centre. Rather than redo the entire routine from scratch, I tried to wriggle it to the middle by fiddling with the hair tie.

‘Ouch! You’re hurting me!’ Joy reached back, undid the ponytail and handed me the hair tie to start again.

I tried to defuse her mood and cover my confusion by neighing and imitating a flustered horse, having trouble with a ponytail, see? But she was in no mood to laugh. How was I supposed to know that you cannot drag a ponytail like a desktop icon without torturing the child?

The solution was staring at me: the water taps. I remembered that Grace and Michelle usually splashed some water on their hair when they were tying it into ponytails or plaits. Water was the gel that gave the hair a defined shape. So that’s why Joy’s silky blonde curls always ended up making a golden halo!

But I didn’t quite get the water thing. I pumped some liquid soap into one hand and added some cold running water, then tried to turn it into a game. ‘Have you washed your face, Zuzu?’

No answer meant no, so I gave her a face scrub, also splashing some water on her hair.

‘Aagh! It’s cold!’ she shuddered.

I tempered the water to warm. ‘The cold was to make sure you’re awake!’ I explained, pretending it was deliberate. Then I asked her to blow her nose into my hand, cupping her mucus so it would not squirt all over the washbasin, just like my mother used to do with each of us, lovingly, each morning. She used to say it would unblock our ears so that we would be able to hear the teacher. Now Joy would hear the teacher too.

‘Yum! Organic hair gel,’ I mused.

‘Eeuw!’ she protested, grossed out. ‘Don’t you dare!’

I washed it away with another dollop of liquid soap and now made sure that the sleep was removed from her eyes.

‘Aah, Dad!’ she cried, pushing my hand away. ‘It stings!’

But the more I added warm water, the more the soap bubbled up around her long eyelashes. She squinted in irritation and I kept splashing and rubbing in frustration. Her eyes tightened, her mouth opened and her cries for help echoed throughout our home.

Maternal Grace came charging in. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Oh, just some soap in her eyes,’ I shrugged.

‘Haram (poor thing). Use the towel, Dad!’

Despite the tears and drama, in the end the soapy water did give Joy’s hair a crisper contour and removed the halo. On special occasions, I graduated to plaits and braids, but only once I’d qualified for my hairdressing P-plates. When we shopped together next, Joy and I looked for blue hair ties to match her eyes and her uniform.

On weekends, we used her fancier selection, which included ties decorated with butterflies.

When Joy’s long hair became knotted, I knew it was time to untangle it with a nice hard brush. I ran a warm bath and added some bubbles, hoping to make it a pleasurable rather than painful experience.

‘Turn around, Zuzu, and close your eyes,’ I instructed. ‘First, we crack the eggs!’ I squeezed some shampoo onto her head and lathered it into her scalp with both hands. ‘Second, the waterfall.’ I poured bucket after bucket of water over her head (warm this time) to wash away the soap.

Then I held her head up with my left hand and brushed her hair down with my right hand. I had expected the shampoo to make the brushing easy, but if anything the knots seemed worse. The only solution, then, was to apply force. But the firmer I held her head, the more she screamed. I gritted my teeth and brushed harder and faster, all the way down, so that her pain—and mine—would be brief.

‘Ouch, Dad!’ she cried. ‘You’re killing me!

I added more shampoo and rinsed thoroughly but it made no difference.

At this point, Michelle rushed in and gasped, ‘Grace, have a look at this!’

As Joy heard her rescuers arrive, her cries became hysterical.

‘Stop, Dad!’ Grace exclaimed. ‘Can’t you see the red lines down her back?’

I lifted her hair and indeed there were scratches on her back from my vigorous brushing. Luckily, her skin was not bleeding, or I could have been arrested! Maybe our neighbours had heard her screams and already called the police. That’s all I needed in my situation!

‘But I used heaps of shampoo to make it smooth!’ I pleaded innocently, shaking the now nearly empty bottle.

‘No! You need conditioner to make it smooth!’

How was I supposed to know this silky-smooth secret? From that day on, Joy’s hair would forever be an effortless pleasure to brush.

Whenever I washed it, I cracked emu eggs of conditioner on her head.

Was I too paranoid, too protective or too private to take ‘driving lessons’ from experienced mothers? I could have asked my extended family or many others in the mothers’ club who were always obliging.

But at the time, I did not want to give anyone any ammunition to gossip about my family. I would imagine them chattering as soon as I walked away, or hung up the phone .

‘Oh, Joe phoned me the other day. You wouldn’t believe what he asked me. He said, “Sorry for the stupid question, but do I use

shampoo or conditioner to remove tangles?” So cute, but those poor girls. How will they turn out with only a man to bring them up?’ . . . Blah, blah, blah.”

Yes, I was probably too paranoid and too private, but I soon learnt not to underestimate the wisdom to be gleaned from the treasures under my own roof—my daughters.

It took some time for me to progress from a P-plater, proving myself, to a B-plater, being myself. My car became a mini-bus for picking up and dropping off their friends.

My daughters and I all resisted the offers for someone else to step in and ask me to step aside. They knew that a man suddenly hopping on one leg was going to fall and fail more often. But they were there to pick me up, with their silent smiles that spoke a thousand words.

It was not me stepping up to the sacred stage of their mother, fearing failure. It was my daughters stepping up to the mother roles, trusting me with their lives, trusting that I had it deep and dormant within me to paddle our life boat to safety.

I used to whisper bed-time stories in their ears to lull them (and myself!) to sleep. Now they whisper reassurances to me, or is that Nadia speaking through them?

My inflated fears have been conquered by their piercing love.

When my eldest two daughters were overseas, I asked my youngest child Joy why she missed them so much.

‘Because we are much more than sisters, Dad. We are best friends.’

This is an edited extract from WHAT MY DAUGHTERS TAUGHT ME by Joseph Wakim, published by Allen & Unwin, RRP $32.99, on sale now

Posted on

Book review: Emotional journey – Widowed father tells his story

http://www.frasercoastchronicle.com.au/news/emotional-journey-book-review/2754941/

Emotional journey: Widowed father tells his story

John Grey | 30th Aug 2015 12:00 PM

THIS is not a how-to book about raising daughters – though there is much to be learned here. What My Daughters Taught Me is a deeply-felt, emotional family journey told by a single father.

Author Joe Wakim’s soulmate Nadia was killed by cancer in 2003, leaving him with three girls to raise.

With honesty, courage, imagination, self-deprecation and humour, Wakim tells of his efforts to be mother and father to the girls, while remaining their friend and keeping their family culture strong.

Fighting against gender and cultural stereotypes all the way, he deals with grief, community expectations and guilt, while encountering a daily slew of challenges which will be familiar to many parents.

He deals with the tyranny of the television (which he dubs “His Majesty”), the distraction of devices (“serial text offenders”), the dance lessons, the sanitary pad shopping experience, the medical dramas, the parties, the fashions and the formals, the first jobs and the driving lessons.

Nadia’s memory is always there with him, manifesting several times in Wakim’s occasionally filmic storytelling to help him sort through issues. These are moving moments, as are those when he recalls her last days.

The wonderful friendship that Wakim engenders with his daughters reaches a timely and mutually frank maturity when the girls begin dating.

Dad expresses his fears about other drivers at night, and strangers trying to spike their drinks. His middle daughter archly responds: “You think we’re that naive? I’ve raised you better than that, Joe Wakim.”

Posted on

Raising daughters as a single dad

http://www.hillsnews.com.au/story/3307118/humour-helped-in-dads-great-challenge/?cs=1454

Hills News, 27 August 2015

 

Baulkham Hills author publishes autobiography about raising three daughters as a single dad

By Flora Cauchi

Aug. 27, 2015

For the past 12 years, Joseph Wakim has laughed, cried and learnt a lot from his daughters.

Exemplary dad: Father-of-three Joseph Wakim said in his family he wears the pants. “But my daughters choose them,” he said and laughed. Here he is with his personal stylists Grace, Joy (front) and Michelle.

FOR the past 12 years, Joseph Wakim has laughed, cried and learnt a lot from his daughters in what he says has been an eye-opening experience.

The Baulkham Hills author recently published an autobiography, What My Daughters Taught Me, based on the “massive task” of raising three daughters who were 4, 9 and 11 when his wife Nadia died of cancer in 2003.

“It was very easy to feel overwhelmed about being a single parent,” he said.

“I was increasingly aware that the answer was in spending more time with them.

“Perhaps not enough men have been able to tell their stories and with the book I feel like I raised the sledgehammer and smashed the rusty shackles”

“But it was a massive learning curve; I didn’t know how to cook, look after their hair or do other domestic things.”

Mr Wakim, 52, a logistics manager, learnt the most important thing was to keep a sense of humour and laugh at moments like the washing gone wrong or taking their pet rabbit out for a walk on a dog leash.

The idea for the book stemmed from an article written for The Hoopla website.

“I wrote about what it’s like for a man to buy sanitary pads for his daughter and it went viral,” he said. “Perhaps not enough men have been able to tell their stories and with the book I feel like I raised the sledgehammer and smashed the rusty shackles.

“There’s a lot of talk about what it means to be a man but we need to have an open mind about it.”

“There’s a lot of talk about what it means to be a man but we need to have an open mind about it”

He admits his perception of what it means to be a strong father has changed.

“Now I know that being strong really means to be able to say sorry when you make a mistake or to be adaptable.

“When we get together, we have an honest laugh and humour’s a very big part of the book.”

Where to catch Mr Wakim talking about What My Daughters Taught Me:

■ Glenhaven Clinic: Book signing at the Father’s Day Forum on September 1, 6pm (corner of Glenhaven Road and Jerrawa Place). Details: Christine Hanna, 0433 655 555.

■ Dymocks Castle Towers: Book signing on Father’s Day eve, September 5.

■ Castle Hill Library: November 27.

 

Joseph Wakim’s top three tips for single parents:

■ Remembering that parents are the first teachers — therefore we have a massive head-start in terms of moulding and shaping our children. No point blaming school or technology later on.

■ Have an agreement that you’re always approachable. I think the opposite of love is fear. You don’t want the kids to be scared of making mistakes.

■ Sense of humour. Especially during puberty and adolescence. If you’re going to correct your children at everything they do, you’ll exhaust yourself. The only way to calm the seas is with the humour hormones. Smile, let it go and move on.

■ The Hills-based non-profit social group called Single with Children offers an opportunity for single parents to meet and support each other.

 

 

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Parenting in the face of grief

http://www.essentialkids.com.au/family-life/family-home/parenting-in-the-face-of-grief-20150821-gj4l72.html

Parenting in the face of grief

August 21, 2015

Joseph Wakim

The chapter headings in my book all begin with ‘How to …’ There is even a chapter titled ‘How to grieve’, as if there was such a ‘recipe’.

Of course, these headings are all tongue in cheek, as I clamoured for a ‘DIY Manual’ when I first became widowed. In my disorientation, I yearned for a lighthouse, somewhere on the dark horizon.

After a two year nightmare with breast cancer, we hoped and prayed that this monster would go away. But it was my wife Nadia who was taken away from me and our three young children who were all aged under twelve years at the time.

Unlike fatal accidents, terminal illnesses may trigger anticipatory grief. While my beloved was melting away like a candle before my very eyes, the shadows on the wall painted a picture of things to come: that day, the silence, the stillness, the darkness, the emptiness. I squeezed my eyes shut but this only accentuated the images of coffins, churches and cemeteries.

These flashes of anticipatory grief can also be a wake-up call to prepare the children for this life-changing experience. In my case, our faith helped me set the ‘stage’. When we recited the rosary, I referred to their holy mother (Mary) Mary in heaven. I referred to the rosary chain as a ‘hotline to heaven’ and the wooden cross as a bridge between this life and the next. I referred to the Creed and all that ‘We believe …’ as if all this would help my children to say goodbye to their mother. My bed-time stories took on themes and characters that subtly prepared them for this bitter pill.

But children’s antennas are sharper than we think and mine already noticed the gradual changes: tip-toeing around the house, more candles and incense burning, whispering instead of talking, mum becoming more bed-ridden. As their dependence on mum decreased, their dependence on me increased. Paradoxically, this was a blessing because their dependence kept me anchored to the here and now.

Then the dress rehearsals are over and the final curtain is drawn. I kissed my wife goodbye then rushed to my children to explain that their mother had now crossed that bridge.

Grief takes its hold on different people at different times. In some cultures, collective wailing is seen as helpful – better out than in, better now than later, better altogether than separately.

But we preferred to keep it in our family. Tears were triggered unexpectedly – from movie scenes, when they could not sleep, from school report cards, when we had bad days and their lips would quiver: ‘I miss mummy …’

As a father, there was no point burying my grief in my pillow. It was expressed rather than suppressed right in front of my children: ‘I miss your mummy too …’

Nadia died the day we moved into our new home, which may have saved us more painful memories. Her shadows never danced on these walls and her voice never echoed in these rooms.

I hung all her clothes in our shared wardrobe. To conceal my own denial, I rationalised this to my frowning children: ‘you never know, one day you may grow into them! You know how fashion goes in circles!’ The truth is that I knew nothing about fashion until they taught me in their teenage years, when I wore the pants but they chose them!

We created our own sacred space – a backyard water fountain crowned with her photo, smiling at us from every angle like the omnipresent Mona Lisa. ‘Mum’ remained an everyday word, not something taboo. It made no sense to hide her wall hangings, as we wanted death to be a part of life, not the opposite of life. Fortunately, we had a great collection of family videos that captured my wife in full flight – singing, laughing, dancing – and my children kept laughing with her.

Anniversaries, birthdays and Mothers Days became dreaded dates on our calendar. To lock ourselves away from the ‘cruel world’ and hold our breath would have been cruel on my children. They did not want to spend the whole day meditating on who they were missing. My children taught me that sometimes they grieve best by doing mundane things with mundane people, perhaps to remove the intensity.

Even our trips to the cemetery could have been guilt-ridden, so I asked my children how they felt.

‘I don’t feel that she’s there … is that a bad thing, dad?’

‘Your mum is already inside you and knows what’s in your heart.’

When they had to make Mother’s Day cards at school, we would place their cards in plastic sleeves and wedge them behind a vase.

There is a paradox with widowed parenting. On one hand, you feel like you are hopping around on one leg, falling more often, running out of breath more often, taking twice as long to do things because there is no adult for you to lean on. On the other hand, what you least accept is someone offering to ‘take the kids off your hands’.

Why? Because you learn that your children are afraid of losing you, for obvious reasons. God knows how many times I prayed ‘please take me instead – my daughters need their mother!’ But at a time of tumultuous changes in our family, I now had to be that constant, that lighthouse for them.

For us, the opposite of life was not death, but wasting this life. For us, the opposite of love was not hate, but fear. It was fear of the unmentionable C-word that delayed my wife from an earlier diagnosis. And it was fear that my children snapped out of me. Every time I nearly drowned in fearing the future, their immediate needs became my life jacket: Dad, I need help with my homework, I can’t sleep, I’m hungry, the printer is not working, I need a lift …

They didn’t care about my gender, they just needed the deed done.

Perhaps a dying parent’s candle is never really snuffed. Their remaining flame just flicks across to the surviving parent who needs to turn it up. Perhaps the lighthouse is not on some dark horizon, but glowing within us.

When we lose a key family member, we are still a family. In fact, we become best friends.

Joseph Wakim is the author of What My Daughters Taught Me, published by Allen & Unwin, RRP $32.99, on sale now