By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
BENTON HARBOR - Poverty poses the greatest threat to peace, Queen Noor, the American who married Jordan's King Hussein, said at the final 2004-2005 program of The Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan Tuesday night.
Those words, uttered by Robert F. Kennedy at the University of Capetown, South Africa, in 1966, still resonate with former campus activist Lisa Najeeb Halaby, who earned a bachelor's degree in architecture and urban planning from Princeton University in 1974.
King Hussein, whom she married in 1978, "is why I believe peace is possible." Diverting resources from waging war to reducing poverty could help clear a path to peace.
People convinced they have nothing are more open to resorting to desperate measures.
Her Majesty said her shared attachments with another country and Arab culture enriched her and quoted former President Bill Clinton in noting the "central irony" that our vision of the 21st century remains clouded by "our oldest demon - our vulnerabiliy to fear each other over differences of religion, race, ethnicity or tribe and nationalism. True peace must come from our hearts' desire for our neighbors' well-being. What is hateful to you, do not do to another."
Empowering women "is an essential key" because "when we are given money and opportunity, we most often invest in our families. Increasing women's economic power may be the single most effective way … I understand the realities of today's world. Terrorist leaders are violent and ambitious and they don't care who they hurt. Feeding the poor is no foolproof plan to stop them, but when human needs are met in a society, that society is much better able to topple and to resist both tyrants and terrorism. When people have a sense of control over their own lives and some hope for the future, they will fight to hold on to it. In my experience, when people have plenty to eat, they reject violence and injustice," Queen Noor said.
Noor - the name given her by her late husband means "light" - has been "the mother of teenagers for more than 30 years," yet still disappoints young people she meets because they expect her to be wearing a crown.
In her remarks at Lake Michigan College's Mendel Center, the author of "Leap of Faith: Memories of an Unexpected Life" put her audience at ease by making light of perceptions of royalty and the "fairy tale" existence she must lead.
The former Lisa Halaby acknowledged that "it's rare for an American girl to grow up to become a queen. (Wallis ) tried it. We know what happened to Edward the VIII. Queen Latifah means delicate and sensitive, but (singer Dana Owens) crowned herself and I don't think that counts. The closest parallel, at least for some, has been Grace Kelly. I would hesitate to compare myself with a glamorous movie star."
Noor seemed an unlikely royal. She didn't wear makeup and had to learn to powder her nose for her "public position."
Noor, wanted to join the Peace Corps and, as a political activist in the 1960s and '70s, she marched with Martin Luther King Jr. against Vietnam. She earned a degree from Princeton.
Despite her regimen of public speaking, Noor described herself as shy and grateful that her publisher pressured her to reveal details of her personal life which she found painful during the writing.
Noor recalled her first speaking engagement in 1982 at Georgetown University in Washington. King Hussein, who had been a monarch since 1952, asked her to include a message from him in her remarks about the critical need for a more engaged United States in the Middle East peace process.
Her father was her role model for civic responsibility and interest in the Arab world. He cultivated multiple careers, not the least of which was the pioneering Federal Aviation Administration administrator and the first minority in the Kennedy administration. "He found public service fulfilling, despite the fact his income dropped by two-thirds. I was in elementary school in southern California when I heard the history of my family. I remember sitting there alone, staring out at the limitless expanse of the ocean. It was as if my world had suddenly expanded. Not only did I have a sense of identity, but I felt connected to the wider world. To my mother's frustration, I was most intrigued by my more exotic Arab roots. How could my mother's hardworking Nordic forebears. The dashing Halaby brothers hailed from Syria and Lebanon and found business success."
On a visit to the Middle East in the winter of 1949, Noor's mother wept at the sight of Palestinian refugee camps - not out of "ethnic kinship," but human compassion. Today, 6 million Palestinians have descended from those driven from their ancestral homelands. "There are 35 million other refugees and displaced persons around the world. The Arab-Israeli conflict permeated every aspect of life."
Noor enrolled in journalism at the Columbia University graduate school, but "before I could begin" found herself married when the king "literally swept me off my feet" with a proposal in a month. They evaded his security detail by flying off in his helicopter. Like her father, Hussein was a "gravity-defying, free-spirited aviator. Hussein showed me from the air that borders on the map are politically expedient, not impassable barriers. In spite of our widely different backgrounds, we shared a passionate commitment to social justice."