 So good day, dear friends, morning, afternoon, wherever you are and whatever time this event is being broadcast. So my name is Dan Perel, I serve as one of the representatives for the Baha'i International Communities United Nations Office. I serve in this capacity in the great city of the Covenant, New York City. I've been here for about 11, 12 years. I've had the good pleasure of working with colleagues like Julia Berger, with whom we'll facilitate a conversation after you watch this video. So I was approached some months ago to just spit ball a few ideas about how to talk about the BIC's engagement in the discourse on global governance, which is a focus of the office for the foreseeable future. It might seem obvious to some that we would focus on this because we are sitting at the United Nations or across the street from the United Nations anyway. However, there is not really a strong discourse on global governance, per se, at that level. Most of them are issues related, whether it's the equality of men and women or climate change or human rights, all of which are very important. The conversation around global governance has really begun to emerge particularly fervently in response to the COVID pandemic and then the fallout from that. And as a result, and because of the 75th anniversary of the UN, which was in 2020, the office has begun to more intentionally engage in that space. So when Julia and I were discussing this possibility, we had a couple of ideas. And where we landed was that it might be nice to call in somebody with whom we work in this space. Her name is Dr. Azha Karam. She's a dear friend of the office, personal friend of a number of us in the office. And she has ample experience in this space. She's a former United Nations official with the UNFPA, that's the Population Fund, where she did a lot to do with culture. She helped set up what's known as the Interagency Task Force, an engagement with faith-based organizations. That is a UN interagency. So there's all these agencies at the UN Task Force to engage in faith-based organizations. And then resulting from that, there was also this MFAC, M-F-A-C, which is the Multi-Faith Advisory Council, which was set up to provide advice to the interagency task force. It's all super simple. But really, it's all initiated by Dr. Karam, who really did this sort of in the face of a lot of tension around the role of religion in society. So kudos to her for those good efforts. She's since has left the United Nations, and she's now the Secretary General of Religions for Peace. She's also been appointed recently as a member of the High Level Advisory Award on effective multilateralism, which was appointed by the Secretary General himself to look at different strategies for effective multilateralism, as the name would imply. There's a lot of letters, but luckily they mean things that sort of make sense if you can get past the strange language. She's also a member of the Steering Committee for Stockholm Plus 50, which was this big event that took place last week as I speak to you in Stockholm. And so, you know, and more than all of this, she is a close friend, as I mentioned, and she's very familiar with the Baha'i Faith and the representatives at the office. So she and I had a conversation about the role of global governance, about the role of religion, about the Baha'i community, the opportunities of the international order, some of the tensions that we see arising now. And so this conversation is really a back and forth, very organic. We didn't necessarily, well, we certainly did not rehearse it as you will see, but it was a nice chat. It was meant to be about 30 minutes, and it took an hour as these things do. She had a lot to share, and I hope that it is worthwhile to those gathered at the ABS, those who are joining us, either live or afterwards. And as I mentioned, Julia and I will have a little conversation afterwards and hopefully opportunities for a question and answer if there are, if there are any, which I'm sure there will be. And I look forward to seeing you then. So awkwardly, I am probably watching this video right now and we'll watch the next one. And then I'll be with you afterwards. So enjoy the viewing. There we are. Well, thank you so much, Azza, for agreeing to join in this little conversation for the Association for Baha'i Studies. So we'll just jump right in. There are a few questions I wanted to ask you about sort of this moment in history. You have, as mentioned, quite a distinct role in the international community, both from a faith-based perspective, but also your history within the UN, your role with the High-Level Advisory Board and on the Stockholm Plus 50. I mean, you have so many, your hands in so many different pots. I'm curious, what are some of your readings of the distinctive features of global governance or humanity as a whole, morally, politically, at this time? My distinctive readings? Yeah, what do you read? Like, what's the reality that you're seeing out there? Oh, gosh, right. Well, that's a brilliant question. First of all, thank you for identifying me as someone who would be of interest to the Baha'i community in any way, shape, or form. I think I don't take that lightly. I'm deeply grateful and honored with that recognition and the opportunity to share some ideas. If you ask me the way I see the world right now, I would say that there are two distinct tendencies. In terms of governance, geopolitics, and our normal lives, I think that we are in a moment where hatred, hate speech, the winner takes all the might-is-right exceptionalism to not exceptionalism in a good way, but exceptionalism to law, order, principles, values seems to be so normal, so normal, so that in a sense, when we talk about the rule of law, it sounds really naive in this context. But on the other hand, and that was sort of a glim-horror picture, but you can't avoid it given the fact that we're back at war in so many countries almost in every continent. There is an armed conflict, at least one, if not many, taking place. Something is very seriously wrong with our world today. And I was speaking to some of the other day, and they said, well, maybe it's always been like that, but we just seem to know more about it because of communications and technology and whatever. And that may be true, but that doesn't make one feel any better, because then it means that we've not changed one iota with everything that we are supposed to have advanced and developed and evolved and whatever. Well, guess if it's been the same always, but we just know more about it, then it's an even bigger indictment in the sense. But on the other hand, I think the exact opposite, I see remarkable resilience of communities, of people in very difficult, challenging times. I see a move to faith, which is not to instrumentalize it, but to find strength in it. And I see more willingness to come together based on our shared commonalities as humans and societies. I also see remarkable resilience in our cultures, art, poetry, film. There's such a bit. I mean, we can easily get so absorbed in the darkness, but we must also understand that right next to it is a remarkable form of human resilience. I see in the same way that I decry the fact that, for instance, religious institutions are not working together more. I also notice that religious communities, people of faith, are very much coming together more at the very grassroots communal level. There's so much happening. And I'm seeing something that's also given me even more hope, which is young people who have a lot to say and say it very well and do so much. And honestly, it just inspired me tremendously. Many of them, I mean, some of them are also doing things that you wish would never be done. But by and large, I'm seeing a remarkable breath of life in our young people. So I mean, there's so much more to say. But yeah, I think we're living, I think it was, who was it, Charles Dickens, who said they were the worst of times. They were the best of times. And I think that's where we're at. Yeah, I think there's so much to this sort of giant elephant of reality, and we all can hold on to different parts of it. And it could all be true at the same time, even though it's vastly different. So you're sitting now in Stockholm once again, after having been there a couple of weeks ago. And it seems that you're called upon time and again to speak in one way or another about the relationship either between faith and the international order or global governance in and of itself. And I'm wondering, what do you think at this particular time in history is the role of these global governance frameworks, the SDGs, the Paris Agreement, what are some of their strengths and some of their weaknesses, and how can they perhaps help us navigate through the challenges that you had described? You don't ask easy questions, do you? Well, I would if you weren't so brilliant. No, no, no, no. And I think my brilliance has got to do with yours, actually. A couple of things that I would say that I think one of the key challenges we're all facing as a planet is that we are so heavily reliant on nation-states. They are the essential institution, the essential foundation for our citizenship or lack thereof, for our social services or lack thereof, for peace and security or lack thereof, for food, water, shelter, health, et cetera. We are so completely reliant on governments as we know them today. And the very sad challenges that governments are not able to fulfill the basic social contracts with their citizens or with anybody, quite frankly. But I think all governments are facing a real inability to deliver on basic needs for their people, including rich governments. And if you live in the United States, you don't really have to look very far to see the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, the very seriously poor communities that are absolutely not getting any decent health care or education or sanitation or nutrition or anything that are considered basic needs. So effectively, we are talking about a world in which the governments that we need and that we rely on have essentially and are essentially failing the needs of their people. And therefore, we're also looking at the largest number ever of refugees and displaced people in the entire world. I mean, we have enough refugees and displaced people to fill a country. They are more than the populations of many countries, 80 million, almost. That's more than the population of a lot of countries around the world. And these are people who are disenfranchised, dispossessed, and don't have the basic right to be affiliated to any particular boundary of a nation, because our nations have failed us peoples. So I think that's the essential quandary. When we talk about multilateralism or global governance, how are we going to begin to deal with these situations when the very basic structure, which is required and is essentially de facto and de jure, serving people, governments, that very basic structure is, let's just say, struggling, if not outright failing. So then what do you do? Because you can't imagine a world without governments. Can we? I mean, what? Empires of all, what did we have before? We had tribes, communities, still do. Tribes, communities, but we didn't have nation states as in the Bretton Woods understanding. We had empires. They were almost all of them feudal in nature. They weren't democratic empires. Weather north or south, east or west, by the way. No empire was democratic. So what is then the imaginary that we need to conceive of if it is not the nation state? And I think that's essentially where we are. That's the quandary we happen to be in. And in spite of this quandary, we still are thinking and conceptualizing governance as the quintessential obligation of governments, what governments are supposed to do. So how do we get over that? Well, we have more reliance on civil society. The next best option, what? Civil society? Or is the next best option, global institutions like the United Nations and regional institutions like European Union, African Union, what's our recourse if it's not the government? What then would be our recourse? And I think it's hard to think of this in the context where the institutions of global governance, which are usually referred to as the multilateral institutions like the United Nations, are themselves mirroring the weakness of the nation states because they are where the nation states come together to form the global governance institution or mechanism. So the suggestion that seems to be on the table now is either civil society. We all have to ramp up our civil society activism, but look at our civil societies. They're handicapped instruments for a number of levels, for a number of reasons. One is that there's no such thing as a global civil society. There's no such thing as a global civil society. So then we're talking about national civil society. So the national civil societies have the same issues that the governments are facing. Because in many instances, a civil society in country X mirrors and responds to and has to live in and survive in the same challenges that the government itself is imposing on it. That's why we were talking before the COVID disaster. We were talking about what was it now threatened shrinking civil society space? Remember? Well, it was shrinking before COVID. Now COVID happened, and COVID was an opportunity for some authoritarian governments to become even more imposing. Then where's the civil society? How's that going for us? So relying on civil society, if we have to move into a civil society space and say, OK, this is where the hope is. For the world, it's going to be civil society. Then, oh my goodness, imagine the responsibilities that people like you and I and every average Joe Schmoll, it's going to have to confront. Because we don't even civil society in one country doesn't come together in a coherent format and work together systematically. Who holds civil society accountable? Right? And we don't even have a coexistence between the secular civil society and the religious civil society. Actually, we keep them apart. They're two separate realms. And they're two separate realms, not just because the secular civic space doesn't like the religious space and doesn't trust it for reasons that go back and certainly are still happening today. But also because religions, some religious leaders and some religious institutions have this claim to a moral superiority. They don't see themselves as just civil society. They see themselves as exceptional, which doesn't help because if you keep thinking that you're very exceptional because you have a link to something divine, you kind of don't exactly mesh and mingle with the rest of the mere mortals very easily. So OK, so civil society may not be the savior. Then what? Ah, perhaps we can improve the United Nations. But even those working in the United Nations are now trying to get ideas for how to improve the United Nations. And they're not even talking about UN reform anymore. They're talking about networked, global governance mechanisms. And I ask you, what is that? What is that going to look like? I wonder. I wonder. We have examples, you know, like, oh, there's this. There was this attempt at COVAX. There's this other attempt at GAVI, the Global Fund. And you think, yeah, but those are very issue-specific. Are we now breaking up into issue-specific global networked global governance mechanisms? And so where does that leave our governments? Where does that leave the intergovernmental entities? What's that going to look like? I mean, those mechanisms work because to some extent they're still working with governments. They still serve certain governments. They remove the governments out of the equation if that were even possible. And you are in a genuine dilemma because then who's representing what? Who are we working with here exactly? Corporations? Are we to see how the corporations now are very vital in the survival of so-called networked global governance mechanisms? Is this just another word for how we now need to rely on those with money and corporate influence? So it all kind of is a little bit worrying, to be honest with you. And at the end of the day, I think we have no choice, really. But to try to hold governments accountable and to make our governments work. Honestly, I don't see how else we're going to get out of this particular rut because the end of the day, it's governments that have to work. They have to work. Because I would rather that my government, as challenged as it is, is held accountable or attempting to and improving in some way, shape, or form through with community work, with whatever, than that I would now have to figure out how my allegiance to corporations would look like. I would really rather not have it so focused on the money trail. Because to me, that's no matter how ethical every single corporation would be. Somehow that doesn't seem to be the right social contract. It's not a social contract with a corporation that I would want or even several corporations claiming to be morally right. I would much rather try to improve upon the social contract with my government. So perhaps, thank you for that. That was really quite an amazing whirlwind tour of many of the issues that we're facing in governance. What do you do when those in whom responsibility is entrusted are not living up to it? Do you turn to another source? Do you try to strengthen that source? And perhaps it's a little bit of a tired analogy. At least it's tired to me because I've been saying it for a couple months now. But it's this idea of a Copernican moment where when Copernicus recognized that the Earth was not the center of the universe, it actually changed more than just the models of the solar system. It actually changed how we engage with space. If it weren't for that moment, we wouldn't be able to go to the moon or to explore Mars. And so part of me is thinking about at the moment, the analogy for the Earth-centric model is the state sovereignty model. And once we move past the state sovereignty model, much like once we move past Earth-centrism, we are able to find new kinds of opportunities and new realities that we haven't been able to see before. We don't even know what they might be. And the first thing that you identified when I asked you about global governance was state sovereignty. And my- No, I didn't know. Wait, wait, wait. Just as we, but very important correction. I didn't identify state sovereignty. I identified governments as institutions as a necessary reality. So state sovereignty is another issue. Sovereignty is about inclusion, exclusion, power over resources versus dissemination of power. It's about sovereignty is another issue entirely. And governments so far, so far when we've looked at states and governance mechanisms, it's automatically translated into the ability to rule and to own and control resources, for sure. But does that automatically translate into excluding certain groups and communities? Does a nation state boundary have to be who stays in and who stays out? I think the way of governance, the way we understand governance is already fundamentally challenged by international human rights law, international humanitarian laws, and a whole bunch of conventions that actually obligate nation states to be of service not only to their own rounded citizens, but to be of service to humans. And I think this distinction is extraordinarily important. When I say I'd rather keep a social contract with my government, I'm not talking about keeping a social contract so that the government can continue to rule the way it does. I am saying I want to hold them accountable. And I would hold them accountable to the way that they exclude refugees and displaced people, to the way that they push for dispossession of people within their own boundaries, to the way that they abuse rights that they're meant to protect of all that they can have purview over. So it's not to assert their sovereignty to behave as they will, but perhaps to hold accountable their actions to international norms and values. That is the renegotiation of the social contract that I believe. And I believe it's much easier. That's the wrong choice of words. Let's just say I believe it's more necessary and more likely to be able to renegotiate the contract to hold accountable your government than it will be to try to hold accountable a corporate or a series or a global or conglomerate of corporations. Yeah, I agree. I think that what you're saying makes total sense. And it has to do with sort of where the lines in. And I'm going back to sovereignty just because of the sort of ease of ease of with which it can be used. But this idea of like, where do the bounds of sovereignty extend? At what point is there an infringement on sovereignty from the perspective of the civil society that's holding you accountable or from the perspective of an international governing body that is also holding you accountable. That's human rights law and the like. And I think that there are questions about the limits of sovereignty, which I think are new questions or perhaps newly applicable questions in light of sort of this moment in history with climate change and COVID and all of these. They're more urgent questions because they've been there ever since the UN Charter. These questions have very much been on the table. The whole idea behind the United Nations Charter and its first sentence is we the peoples. It doesn't say we the nations. It says we the peoples. Because the understanding that is undergirding this idea is that it's peoples of the world trying to come together how through the only institution we know, which is their government. And so this idea of shared responsibility of the common good and of shared responsibility for the common good is the basic foundation of human rights. We don't have to reinvent human rights. And by the way, we wouldn't have had human rights if we didn't have our faiths and traditions because it was essentially derived all these rights were derived on the basis of the shared common values shared from where from our religions from our traditions, our faith traditions. So the idea of common action for the common good and a common sense of responsibility for the common good is actually what the UN is supposed to be about. It isn't about governments coming together and humming and hawing and talking and then everyone going and expressing their the importance of the sovereignty to kill their own citizens or to abuse people, left, right and center, including other people's citizens. I mean, that's not it. That is absolutely not it. So I think that COVID, the public health disasters and pandemics that we are likely to confront, God forbid, the very real climate disaster that is impacting our oxygen, our water, our food. All of these have, I think, not I think, have obviously made more urgent what the common good is and how it should because our air is common good. We can negotiate the terminology of common good and common from here until kingdom come. Essentially the air we breathe, the water we drink is our common good. We won't have this planet if we don't protect it and it belongs to all of us and all of us have a stake in surviving this planet because not all of us can afford $50 million to get on a flight and go to Mars or whatever it is or the moon. And frankly, many of us don't want to do that even if we would have had this access to the money. We want this earth. This is our common responsibility. This is our common heritage. This is our common good, a healthy living planet. So all of these things have actually moved fast forward the urgency to implement what was originally on the table. We, the peoples who live on this blessed planet. And I think you're right about the Copernicus moment, but I am personally really not interested in the rest of the universe. I really, really, really, I'm interested in this earth and it really in so many ways is the original heaven that we still are in. We still have this heaven. We haven't been kicked out of it yet. We're still in this heaven, in the Arabic language, this is it. This is it as appalling as it is for so many, as challenging as it is for so many, this is our heaven. And there is a common responsibility towards it. We have states, let the states work by making them accountable to working. Let us figure out ways and quite frankly, of course we can talk about how challenging it is when it's police states and then there's more and more police states, militarized governments around the world, more and more. And it makes it very difficult to stand up to them, but it makes it very difficult to stand up to them within the one boundary of a nation. But imagine if we were to be able to come together as peoples, which is what the original idea of the United Nations was. We, the peoples actually can come together as peoples and hold account when at one point there was this dream or a member of responsibility to protect. There was this ethos of the responsibility to protect, which everybody's now hoeing and hawing and laughing. But it's actually the essence of what the United Nations system should be doing. And what it essentially argues is that, okay, we'll all do respect to nation states, but if a nation is butchering its citizens and depriving them of their very basic rights, then it is the responsibility of the rest of the peoples of the world to try to hold that nation accountable, that government. And why is that such a bad idea? It's such a bad idea because we haven't done it. It's such a bad idea. Look what happens when we don't do it. Then it's absolutely legitimate to be at war, to take what you need for your own peoples' good or your understanding of your own peoples' good. It's legitimate to be at war because it's not about the common good. It's about the national good and the national good will not save this planet. Yeah, absolutely. I think this notion of collective security is central to what's necessary. If I could just quickly offer a clarification and then another question. The clarification is the Copernican moment is meant as an analogy, not that I think we should be going to space, but that we need to have that fundamental rethinking of the relationships of the different levels of governance just as there was a fundamental rethinking of the center of the heliocentric solar system. But that's all by the by. You started to reference it a little bit in a couple of your answers about the role of faith and faith communities at this moment in history. And I'm also curious, not only their role as you understand it, but also what are some of the contributions they have made and you referenced this with the University of Declaration of Human Rights and others, but what are some of the contributions that they've made that you find to be significant in a positive way? I know that there are some that would identify some of the sources of division that they can sometimes foment, but in a positive way, what do you identify? Thanks. I think it's important for us to bear in mind actually that the religious institutions, religious non-governmental actors, including communities, but they are the original providers of care to their communities, right? So the very first hospitals that we've ever known are actually housed within religious institutions, right? Very first schools were housed in religious institutions. So there's a very strong connection between the basic needs that human beings have, food, water, shelter, education, health, but these very basic needs were actually always provided through religious institutions when, and hence we also have had empires which grew out of these and hence the original feudal lords were also the churches and mosques and mosque-related entities. So that long-term perspective is valuable for us to understand that that role, that the religious worlds, for lack of a better word, have always provided that that role still stands today. So we know for a fact that it doesn't matter what the percentage is, but there's a significant healthy percentage of hospitals and schools around the world today that are owned and operated by religious institutions and their affiliates. So when we think about human development, sustainable human development, which is all about health, education, nutrition, sanitation, water, the whole Tamasha, when we think about those, we have to understand that these institutions and their affiliated entities remain very critical providers of those services. Now we can disagree about the quality of the services. We can be very upset about the kinds of things that get said or taught, of course, but the point is they still provide those social services in almost all communities everywhere in the world. So in Geneva the other day, I realized that the churches are coming together to carry out a very big campaign to help feed the hungry in Geneva, Switzerland because there are hungry people in Geneva, Switzerland. And who's looking after them? A lot of these are church-based actors. And this is such a simple truth. So we think sustainable human development, we have to think of how these institutions and social service providers continue to be very important actors. But what about? What about? Which institutions own land? Land through which rivers run? Which institutions are actually owners of a great deal of resources that are environment, that is about our environment? We have to realize that these institutions are also what we think only corporations own land? Religious institutions own land, religious actors own plenty land at a minimum. They own the land on which they built their particular Moscow synagogue or temple or whatever it is. And invariably these are connected to other things. I am here in Stockholm, Sweden. This hotel I'm staying in is actually owned by the church next door. It's owned by the church next door. It's a hotel to which anybody can come. So we don't seem to equate the idea that you have, that these religious institutions, religious actors are actually also having a stake in the very management of the natural resources that are here, that are there. How many own forests? How many own deserts? They own plenty of natural resources which are called environment, part of our environment. Then if we are not convinced by that, even that is not convincing, then let's look at the fact that these are also, some of the most, some of them, not all, are actually quite wealthy, really relatively doing okay. They can keep their basic institutions humming and running to provide services. So there's quite a few financial resources in those spaces as well, that we haven't quite looked at. But I mean, we understand that the Vatican has a bank. We've heard of Islamic finance. We know that UNICEF, one of the largest United Nations system entities gets a significant amount of resources from religious organizations. They contribute their donors and they're not just donors to UNICEF, they're donors to UNHCR, they're donating to UNDP. So we're talking money, right? Access to resources, financial. And if none of all of that is convincing enough about the role of the religions in our space, then let's remember that for so many people around the world, what the religious leaders say or don't say matters a great deal to how we think, what we believe, and therefore how we behave. Attitudes, these religious leaders still remain very powerful influencers on the average person. We're not talking about, of course we can look at cultural icons and actors and actresses, but let's face it, at the end of the day, a lot for a lot, not the elite obviously, but for a lot of normal, average human being struggling. Religious leaders matter a lot. Sometimes so much that the law doesn't count as much, right? So these are powerful influencers of human behavior, of beliefs that humans hold very dear. And finally, how can we possibly ignore what we're seeing today, which is the role, the intersection between religious and political interests, concerns. There's a war that is being, I mean, for the longest time, we were as a Muslim, I still wear this veil of fear and concern about being seen as a terrorist or being particularly, you know, a sidelined as mean or nasty or aggressive or a million and one things because of what Islamists, radical Islamists have done and continue to do, right? There's at least every day a bomb exploding somewhere that has killed somebody that is being, the action of which is attributed by someone in the name of what they believe is Islam. So we for a long time lived under that. So it's become so normal now. Oh yeah, this bomb went off in Pakistan today. The other thing went off in Mosque in Afghanistan. Yeah, it's these Muslims again, you know? I mean, of course it's not like that, but it's in the minds of so many, this is what religion can do. And on the other hand, you now have a war in Ukraine that is being completely sanctioned by a major church and it's being touted as a just war, which in case you forget was what we heard about the war in Iraq and in Palestine in the United States when it was still being, when it was brewing, it was a just war and who was saying it was a just war religious leaders, some religious leaders were saying this is a just war, i.e. it's religiously sanctioned. So it's not the first time that we begin to see a plethora of validations of political actions, but they are validated on the basis of religious, so-called religious beliefs or assumed religious understanding. So for all these reasons, and the last cherry on top is the fact that at the end of the day, Dan, we don't do communism anymore, we don't do socialism anymore, we don't do liberalism anymore, we're kind of actually searching for an ism, right? So what is it that's gonna, because apparently justice doesn't cut it enough, right? Social justice is just not as attractive or as mobilizing as all these mega philosophies used to be, not so long ago, at least certainly in my lifetime. And I realized that many of us, many of us may be searching for what is it that mobilizes us so much that will make us want to sacrifice our comfort, our money, whatever it is. And for many faith is that mobilizing, great mobilizer. So for all these reasons, religions meant a lot. Fantastic. I'm reminded of this idea that we all, many in secular society sort of make these claims about keeping religion out of it. This first amendment of the United States, which basically says, now we shouldn't prefer one religion over another, which has made a difference to keeping religion totally outside of it. But then, you know, many, many, many, many of us then read prayers with our kids before bed. And it's this weird dichotomy where you say, no religion, no religion, no religion. Oh, but these young minds, we better give them some religious lessons because otherwise they won't have it true enough. And it's that- Yeah, you're right. It's that dichotomy, the same time remember that the point was to keep religion out of public life, i.e. not make our laws based on religious laws, but keep, have a secular basis of law, which would apply to all those with one religion, two religions, all religions, plus those with no religions. And I think we've forgotten a little bit that that was part of what we needed. We needed to deemphasize the power and hegemony of religion over law, laws that regulated human behavior. Religion will always impact on human behaviors and attitudes. There's no question. Faith will always be a primary inspirer of all human behavior. But inspiring human behavior need not translate into therefore the means of adjudicating law should be religious. There's a world of difference between these things. We need laws that are secular that apply to everybody, everybody. Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhists, no religion anywhere, doesn't matter. We need laws that apply across the board equally to everyone. That's the whole point of law, right? We need secular laws. And we forgot that. In our zealousness to protect the secular laws that have to apply to everyone equally, we thought that we must therefore marginalize our faiths, our belief systems. Why? Because remember, this understanding emerged out of a hundred year war in Europe. They fought each other for a hundred years. Catholics and Protestants. So there was this legacy of trauma, of just what belief, if taken to its end-fix stream, if it becomes the guiding principle of public life and the layering of responsibility and the holding of responsibility, what religions can do. And religions can do harm if people work in the name of religions at the expense of working in the name of equality in the eyes of the law of everyone. If we make religion the adjudicator, we are going to get into trouble. Same trouble that our ancestors got into, not so long ago. So there is a need to distance the religious legal system, if you will, from the secular legal system. Because otherwise we would be, I would be treated as a Muslim, you would be treated as a Baha'i in the same country, which is unimaginable, right? In front of the law, maybe you as a Baha'i will have a different way of getting things sorted out. And I as a Muslim will have a different way of getting things sorted out. And by the way, this still remains the case for some women in India. If you're a Muslim woman in India, there's a certain law that applies to you, there's not the same as the law that applies to a Christian woman or a Hindu woman. And it can be very, very unnecessarily bizarre, right? If there's one law that applies to everyone, then so be it, thank you. And actually thank you God. There's one law that applies to all of us, thank you. But because we don't make that distinction, we've ended up thinking we can marginalize religion out of public life completely. But we have to distinguish between religion as the mechanism of law and religions as the service providers and the impactors and influencers in our lives. One, they can actually coexist. A secular legal system can coexist with a very vibrant, multi-religious reality for people. They can and they must coexist. And that's what we have to aim for. And that's how we have to hold accountable those particular political regimes or political parties that try to align with certain religions and certain religious groups. We have to hold them accountable by the same standard, which is international, humanitarian, international human rights law. I'm sorry, this is not right. Just because you are country X with a Y church behind you does not make it okay to go and wage war against another country and its peoples who happen to be of the same religion, by the way, a very similar religion. That ain't right, that is just not right. And that's what we must hold accountable our political institutions to. It's not to say get religion out of the way completely because it's really bad, that wouldn't work. That wouldn't work. It's what everybody holds on to. It's part of our fabric of our lives. But we can't say, you know what? This is the law, you've contravened that law and that's not okay. There are two different arguments. Totally. So I'm conscious of your time. I'm gonna ask us one more question. That was amazing. I'm really grateful to you for sharing. Final question, you have worked for, I won't date any of us, but you've worked for some time with the BIC, with Bonnie, with myself, you know, the behind the national community and you know our contributions, you know our way of working and I'm just curious, what are some to you, what are some of the distinctive features of our engagement and what do you think that we should do? Like if you were our bosses and you said, you know what, you have this voice, here's what I would love to hear or see you doing. It would be lovely just to get your thoughts on that. I have to say that I've been a very long admirer of Baha'ullah, his thoughts, the way the concepts behind Baha'i faith are very, very dear to my heart. And by the way, as a Muslim, they make a lot of sense to me because they are to me a very natural progression from what I believe. It's actually very much aligned with, and I believe it's not just as Muslims that we think that, but anyone who reads the writings of Baha'ullah and learns a little bit about Baha'i faith will realize that this is actually an evolution of the best of all faiths, all faiths. And as someone who sees that and as someone who also has worked with the Baha'i international community, I can in a way personally vouch for the fact that the Baha'is are very much true to their faith in the way that they see the world, in the way that you deal with people. And that's a big deal. It's kind of hard to say that about everyone else. So you talk about the good Christian and the good Muslim. I think Baha'is, so when we talk about the good Christian, it's almost as if we're implying that there are good Christians and not so good Christians or good Muslims and not so good Muslims. I mean, let's face it, that's often when we say, and I am guilty of that myself when I say my good Rabbi and it was pointed out to me that I was saying if my good Rabbi does that mean there's other bad rabbis out there? That wasn't what I meant. But of course it's the sort of a similar thing and you say good, this then means that there's others that are not good. But the fact of the matter is that one can't, I can't speak about good Baha'is because all Baha'is are awesome in the way that they live their faith and use the faith to actually be, they live the faith principles, which is not terribly common, but it's actually lovely to see. And I think that we're all believers often, often trip, if you will, or become human every now and then because all believers are human. I mean, that's all point is that we begin to see that it's our truths as the best truth not just the only, but the best. And I think that's a slightly dangerous slope that almost all faiths, if not all faiths actually go into because this understanding it's the best. It comes, it can come across unintentionally and sometimes it comes across in speeches and ways and like, you need milk no further, this is it. And I think the whole point of what I read in some of the writings of the Baha'i writings is that it's this almost this challenge to be open, the challenge to be questioned, that it's that that is part of being faithful. And by the way, I think that that actually stands in all faith traditions. So if you read the Quran or the Old Testament or the New Testament or even the Mahabharatna, there's this challenge to accept that you will be challenged, that your very faith will be challenged. Everything you believe will be challenged. And it's part of being alive together in a world that is so incredibly diverse because of what we believe and how we look that we are constantly being challenged about what we believe so firmly. So it isn't that we can possibly come to a moment where we're not going to be challenged like that. No, I think it's how we deal with that persistent systematic challenge of what challenge to precisely what we believe. And dealing with that by trying to imply, I'm not saying the Baha'is are doing that, but I'm saying this is a path that so many faiths or religions in particular seem to slip into but it's my faith. This is my faith and it really is the best. Now it's not obviously said like that but honestly that's like the undertone. I got this, my faith has this and it's great. There's nothing better than this surely. And I think that is tricky. And I think all faiths have to be very sensitive to appearing, to go down that route. And what I love about the Baha'i International Community is that I think, I don't know how, but I think you guys actually really seem to hold yourselves to hold that mirror in front of yourselves all the time. How can I draw the common good that we both share, that we all share? How can I draw that? What will it look like with you? Right? And so I've just had the pleasure of reading this one that you kindly shared with me, one planet, one habitation. And it's all about, there's a little blurb there, some a quote from the Baha'i teachings. And the rest is about how can we find this together? What is good for all of us? It's not what is good for us as Baha'is, but it's what is good for all of us. And it's actually something that I hold my own communities around the world very accountable to. Is it about being good Muslims? About what's good for Islam? Is it really? Is it really? Is it really what's good for Christians? Is it really about what would Christ do? Well, I'd love to know what Christ would do, but what would we do for all of each other? And I think that nuance is huge. It's a difference between saying, how can I matter versus how can we matter together? And I think your writings systematically, Dan, what I've read of them, and I've had the privilege of reading them, some of them that you've shared over the years, and the way that you engage and interact with different communities within the UN, with other NGOs, and the way that Bani certainly lives her life, I think you guys have taught me that it's that the diligence, the deliberation, the intentionality of seeing what is good for all of us that we can get there together. So even as you argue for the Baha'is who are so, so horribly treated in different countries, even as you argue for their right, and even as you seek to protect them, you don't ever make it an us and them. That your attempt to safeguard and to protect your own community of believers is fundamentally rooted in your attempt to safeguard and protect all believers. And that's why you've been very active, for instance, in the freedom of religion and belief space, but you've not been very active in the freedom of religion and belief space in the way other religions have to say, it's all about Baha'is, Baha'is, Baha'is, Baha'is, it isn't like that. Whereas the others often have their own, it's their, our community is suffering, our community is suffering, my fellow believers suffering in my same faith is suffering. And it's a very different argument. And that's why within religions for peace, we say it isn't about freedom of religion and belief. It's about the article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says that freedom of thought, conscience and belief, religion and belief. Why? Because the understanding is that my belief will not be protected if yours isn't. And you and I live in the same planet. It's the understanding that your sense of consciousness is integral to mine, which is the quintessential Baha'i teaching, right? It is that understanding of how incredibly interdependent on each other we are, that every faith tradition tries to tell us is the truth that we are completely connected. It's not that if the Jews survive, the rest of the world will survive alone. It's not that if every Christian were saved then the world will be, no, because we all have to be saved together. We all have to survive together. And we won't at the rate we're going because we're getting so incredibly insular in our own spaces. And so it's freedom of thought, it's freedom of conscience and it's freedom of religion and belief. And they are together and they are inseparable. And I think what the Baha'i is, quite frankly, from what I've seen, at least the Baha'i international community over the years, and it's been a long time. I've been working with you all since 2000. In those 22 years, I have learned so much about what it means from you, about what it means to seek the common good to God together. And if there's anything I would say, gee, maybe it would be really nice if you could, I think you guys have actually already done that. When Religions for Peace in 2020 at the height of the lockdown said, you know, we have so many humanitarian funds going on right now, we have so many humanitarian actions, but there isn't a single one that actually tries to deliberately get us to work together as different religious communities. There isn't a single fund that is given to those whose inspiration and whose intention is to bring people of different faiths together to serve everyone. There isn't a single fund for that. So we set it up and we set it up not because it's Religions for Peace, we never intended it to be a Religions for Peace fund. We invited all the religious communities and the secular communities to contribute to this fund, which has one purpose, not to add to the burden of other humanitarian funds or to take away from other humanitarian funds, but to say, can we contribute a little bit to the deliberate intentional support to those who want to work together from different religious beliefs and inclinations. They want to serve this humanitarian space as Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, whatever the composition of that particular community or nation is. And it was deeply, it is a very, how should I put this? It's still very painful to realize that many religions didn't want to be part of this space and that some of the secular actors copied the idea, but for themselves. Yes, how about you give us? All the different religions give us more. Let's create a multi-religious giving to us. And that wasn't the point. It's not about us getting the money from different religions to do the same old, same old work we've always done. It's about us giving, but sharing a little bit of the resources together to give to those who want to continue to pass it forward by working together. And it's a fundamentally different concept. And it still pains me that really actually the ones who have come forward with this are the, no, I am pained that the large religions didn't do this, that the ones who have plenty at their disposal didn't still don't want to do this, but I am incredibly grateful and very inspired by those who do want to contribute. And guess what? There's only two religions to date who have dared to contribute. Because it's not about how much, it's about the fact that you are wanting to contribute. This is a matter of principle. It's the Buddhists, the Vishakusika and the Baha'i international community. You are the only two religions or religious institutions that have actually contributed to the multi-religious humanitarian, to the idea that we put our money where our mouth is and we believe it's important to work together because the good of one is the good of all and the good of all will mean that everyone is looked after, but we actively work towards this together. So that's that, I would just say more of that, more of that insistence on being the exemplars of what it is that it's literally the safety of one depends on the safety of all and that the contribution and the commitment to save all is the point. And I would say please, please do give to those things which the causes, the purposes, the initiatives that are deliberately multi-religious in nature because it's fundamentally what your faith in fact, actually all faiths are trying to say. It is give to all together. Thank you so much, Azza. I hope, I really do hope that that fund is just going through the alphabetical order. So you've got the Baha'is, the Buddhists and then maybe the Christians will come next. Well, I guess Catholic, let's hope. Amen. And we missed out on the agnostics in the eight years but they'll come along one day. Oh, they have in the sense that those who did contribute in the beginning were foundations that are not politically religiously aligned in any way shape or form. So I think there we go. Proving the point. But Azza, this has been as ever delightful and illuminating and I'm really grateful to you for taking the time. I hope you rest well, though it's bright and sunny for the next, I think seven more hours in Stockholm, even though it's 9.30 PM there. Yes, mid-summer. Yes, enjoy the Maypole coming out next week, I believe. Really, this is, yes, I hope it'll be back here in our neck of the woods. But thank you so much for taking the time. It's been really illuminating, really a joy as ever. And thank you for the brilliant questions and thank you for the work you do and thank you for every single member of the Pai community. Honestly, I give gratitude to God for that. Thank you. Thank you. Have a lovely evening, Agha. Thanks so much. Thank you, you too. Bye bye.