Tim Sebastian Visit to AHSSB

Debate …

or range yourself against the motion ‘Free your minds’, ‘Free society’,

‘Be limitless’, ‘Be innovative’, “I want to lead the community”,

“Community has to communicate with itself”,

“We need people with more ideas”,

“Question every one, everybody and everything”, “We are all equal”, “Change for the better” …

Like heavy rain over a thirsty fertile land, these historical words were incessantly highlighted by our dear Guest of Honor Mr. Tim Sebastian

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xtremely and intellectually compelling, out of knowledge thirst and beyond inquisitive curiosity, Ahmad Bin Hanbal

away from probationary phase thus probing the world of debate from a daring proximity.

On Thursday the 11th day of November “... (you 2010 late in the morning, are) exactly at 11:55 , our people of persuasion School Headmaster Mr. Al-Shammary and open Jamil thinking� and the Academic vice -principal Mr. Reda Saad Al Mahdy, Mr. Mithgal, the English department Head, and the English Independent School for Boys, teachers were at the LRC proud of its English Department honorably welcoming the Doha staff , realized an envious Debates founder and chairman exploit seemly fairly possible to accompanied by Ms. Sheila, other institutions of the Qatari the Educational Outreach Educational and Logistic System and ...(you are) people Coordinator at the Corps. Having of persuasion and Doha Debates, as managed this, well as a Jordanian the English open thinking journalist.

Department

All parts were thoroughly satisfactorily emphasized, and ready to launch the carefully got its commitment to, the prepared and professional importance of cultural world meeting which unexpectedly outside and inside Qatar directly

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proved to be an identical microcosm of the Doha Debates meeting at the Qatar Foundation

the former Tim’s Hard Talk.

The Topics were various and colourful enough to powercoat

Building. The presence of our curious and lovely students, our Senior Management, our Department and the honourable guests of other schools, ranging from English Department heads to English teachers paved the way to a fruitfully polemical debate touching and reaching almost all sorts and aspects of

the interlocutors’ un-histrionic participations to a more cosy and relaxed talk yet in the same time revived and interactively generated.

The history and the course of the Doha Debates, censorship, The Why and How behind Tim’s first arrival to Doha and his biography synopsis were

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the first highlighted stations and engines for further topics partly out of the meeting respect and mostly rigorously embedded in the spirit of the Doha Debates in particular.

Tim was passionately caring and easygoing while handling the questions which he ranked as not difficult or hard but tough enough to raise the value of the meeting to an unexpected high intellectual level. The students did almost the

majority of the talk with a more than one question posed by each of them. The openness he intersected in his speech with the challenging issues he tackled overwhelmed our students and drove our guests over the jeopardy bridge.

He first talked of the political area and arena in terms of the first and prime issue to open up the talk with hyphenating it while waging a war on a direct

I don’t have a say in that, I’m totally neutral

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shortedsightedness and submissiveness. He urged the students to have a firmer stand against being governed without their own will by saying that “the government is supposed to serve you and not the other way round”. They should be decision makers and be what they want to be. The diversity of opinions seemed to be in his point of view the legitimate founder of the debating culture.

An important contribution to an ideal society is by having the bold lead in one’s community not for the sake of leading but to make life seem and be better.

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More ideas will not demolish the social concord yet add to its homogeneity and closelywoven fabric. Hope seems in our point of view his leading motive in a dull and dismal world. He gave an example of his triggering act that gave him the opportunity to settle down in Qatar as a legitimately official Doha Debates founder safe from censorship.

TV and radio are means, for him, to make one’s voice heard and reach societies, cultures, nations and minds. He gave another unexpectedly striking example of our 15-century

religious culture as Muslims.

He said that the debating and consultative culture was started with us, the Muslims, by our Prophet MOHAMMED (PBUH) who was the first man who created the foundations for

The 22 Arab nations with 200 million people and the 1, 600,000 Muslims are talented and have the potential will to create a nation of creativity, ingenuity and inventiveness.

We still have something to

a society that should delegate its points of views to reach and accomplish a controlled seizure of the very relevant solutions, decisions, while shunning reckless improvisation and the unequal and unjust arbitrariness.

say and offer. “People of persuasion and open thinking� is the equivalent to our first steps in the stream of Islamic turn of mind.

Students proved to be important and relevant in asking questions and

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posing exclamations around Tim’s choice of topics, guests, alternatives and his position in the talks which he says is neutral.

”I don’t have a say in that, I’m totally neutral” seems to entitle his statically unbiased position in the debates and that is what we have felt after attending The Doha Debates.

The questions he poses his guests being for the motion or against it are purely for the purpose of clarification and

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behind the quest of certainty, which is intended to help the audience better handle the positions taken by the debating guests.

Our students indefatigably were keen on asking questions about Tim’s personal and professional life. He was trying to stick more to the notion of mind and matter, individualism vis-á-vis the very person on the one hand and society on the other, communicational basics and other principally technical

issues whereby his world of the limitless free mind becomes highly potentially realisable. He is against the saying “Mind over matter. Keep your mind because at the end it won’t matter� which seems to be fraught with carelessness, negligence and ignorance that stem most from

embarrassing cowardice, and steady illiteracy and knowledge of the matter.

Mind for him will set off for the freer version of the intellect but within the logically suitable coating of the eternally inseparable responsibility and accountability. Qatar for him is getting freer than other

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contemporary societies in the region and of the same roots.

Being able to cut the old rusty ties of hugely heavily-burdened turn of mind tarnished mainly by the stereotypes and taboos...

Being able to cut the umbilical cord with the opaque unclear vision of reality and truth, our Nation authentically erupts and appears as such a safe, pure, clean and clear from tarnishing its contemporary i m a g e among the developed world nations.

Tim has understood that his invitation by his Highness AL Amir Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, the government and the Cultural Ministry is far way above showing off or boasting to boost the propaganda of a fast fading pretence. He

admitted that he set the rules for a free debate above the ties of censorship which were, over a matter of principle, accepted on the spur of the moment. When he was asked about his 35- year

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experience he had with the BBC he said that he didn’t receive any directives from the BBC on how or what to do. He enjoyed the experience of non- interference that prevailed.