Building a Culture of Peace in Multiethnic/Multi-religious Societies

LaShawn Jefferson, Karima Bennoune, & Zainah Anwar at "Challenges of Change" Photos on Flickr | Videos on YouTube

I reserve the right to reject the idea that my choices are limited to accepting either Glenn Beck or sharia [Islamic law]. -- Karima Bennoune

Challenges of Change: Religion, Secularism & Rights
Panel 2: Chaired by LaShawn Jefferson, Speakers Karima Bennoune and Zainah Anwar

Promoting human rights does not mean suppressing cultures or social differences, but rather seeking to integrate human rights into them, said LaShawn Jefferson, a Ford Foundation program officer and former executive director of the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch.

Karima Bennoune, professor of law at Rutgers University, said many political aims are now expressed in religious terms, so we tend to misread them as religious and cultural movements. For example, the Taliban and other armed political groups in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia have adopted the language of Islam, so some of their opponents have wrongly conflated extremism with Islam as a whole.

Similarly, patriarchal extremists use Islam to justify discrimination against women as God’s law, said Zainah Anwar, project director of Musawah and former executive director of Sisters in Islam. “We need to build public outrage at this misuse of Islam… Public law and public policy must be by definition the product of public discussion,” Anwar said. If Islam is immutable and divine law, it must be removed from the public sphere.