 Okay, let's start shall we? Greetings everyone and good morning to all of you on this well beautiful sunny day in London. I don't know what it's looking like where you are. My name is Amine Yakin. I'm the director of the Sawas Festival of Ideas. This is our fifth day. The festival theme is dedicated to decolonising knowledge. We have had an invigorating four days of debates and discussions from various disciplines and researchers talking about stuff from how we decolonise our research methods to how we decolonise the curriculum in the classroom. And we are also in conversation with colleagues working on themes of decolonising at Sawas and they are in conversation with their partners and collaborators and researchers from a variety of global south locations ranging across Africa, Asia, the Middle East. And it's been an absolute, I think, learning, massive learning experience for all of us to be in the same sort of virtual spaces. This format, the Zoom format allows us to sort of do that and to be to have conversations and dialogues that perhaps we would be having differently in other ways. And today it gives me great pleasure in this particular session which is devoted to how perhaps we think about decolonising the study of Pakistan which often focuses on ideas of development and various contexts in which it is thought of as a place which is on the brink in terms of its political stability. And what's exciting about the research on the subject or on Pakistan at both at Sawas and with our research colleagues that we have invited to these conversations is that they are talking about this work in different and innovative directions and one such person who is with us today is the wonderful and distinguished speaker and researcher Dr. Amine Hothi. She is a fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham and program director at the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. Her CV is vast so I'm just giving you selected highlights of where her various locations have been. At the HEC Pakistan she overlooks the CRIT program at 200 universities of the country and the I've come to know Amine through her project that she was a part of with Professor Akbar Ahmed on journey into Europe and really got an opportunity to understand the important interventions that she's making with regards to gender to peace building and to human rights and women's rights in her work and all of these things is what she is encouraging with chairs in Pakistan through the CRIT program in the country's universities on global peace human rights women's rights seeking education so Amine that's just you know wonderful to see and and such an inspiration and she in her PhD at the University of Cambridge she studied the tribal areas of Pakistan adjoining her fieldwork area and through her work she she's been encouraging gender studies and involving students who will study who are studying women in their natural social environments and Muslim societies and in the West and another big part of Amine's work is interfaith and interfaith is something that she's been teaching in the UK University of Cambridge and in Islamabad Jordan Abu Dhabi Qatar I hope I've got all the places correctly and today the book that we are here to celebrate is the book that is connected deeply to this work on interfaith and it's gems and jewels the religions of Pakistan it is based on interfaith dialogue and studies of religious minorities in Pakistan and I'm very very excited that she has agreed to speak to us about it today and we'll be talking we'll be in conversation about it and I'd just like to share something from the forward from his Royal Highness Prince Al-Hassan bin Talal and his comment on the book and he says in a welcome counter narrative to the media portrayal of a nation of rigid and at times militant exclusivism and extremism the troubled child of South Asia abundant in natural and historical riches but plagued with political instability Hothi shows us a land and a people of fascinating depth and sophistication and he says and this is an endorsement that I think all of us would want for our books he says this book is a glorious read accessible enjoyable irradiating resonance of vivid human images voices faces and places and a celebration of the richness of diversity that connects us with the beauty of the different and the human character at its best. Amine I've been reading the book and it's just absolutely I've loved the tone of it the celebration of the different religions and I think we're talking about this at a time when sectarian divisions in Pakistan are at a high point so it's really important to have a book like this that talks about religions in Pakistan so I'd like to extend a warm welcome to you this morning for joining us and thank you so much for being part of the festival of ideas and I'd like to just invite you to to tell us a little bit about the inspiration for this book. Thank you very much Dr. Amina Yakin for that very warm welcome I don't deserve it but I really appreciate it and thank you to all your technical support and your friends back there who are making it all happen Sunil and my other friend today thank you for this wonderful team who are playing such an important role at university and really bringing in key and cutting edge ideas and that's what we've really got to do at university campuses so I really appreciate your work Dr. Amina thank you. I want to step back for a minute and I want to of course thank all the audience and participants here and I want to introduce you a little bit to where I grew up and how I grew up in the field because I grew up accompanying my father who's also an anthropologist and a field worker he was also a civil servant in Pakistan and we traveled across Waziristan, Balochistan these are you know some of the very tribal areas in Pakistan from one end to the other which was Swarth, Swarth to Waziristan, Balochistan and his roots were really in Swaz because that's where he did his PhD and that's where he was engaging with these intellectual ideas but also being challenged by his professors and his elders so really he was again asking those key questions who am I what is education for etc so that's my background and I grew up with professors Professor Geertz and Professor Larry Rosen who are really big giants in the social sciences and particularly in my field which is social anthropology so I'm now a social scientist and educationist trained for a PhD in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge but my first encounter with social anthropology was at LSE at the London School of Economics where I read this very big book by Malinowski who's the founding father of anthropology and the book was called The Sexual Lives of Savages and then another book was called Frederick Barth and he wrote on the Swarth Bhatans and both books showed me as a student how far these authors were from the perspectives of the people's studied and one day I wanted to when you know I got there at that stage myself I would have loved to challenge those ideas in a positive constructive way and to some extent that's what I did in my PhD on this on Puchtoons of northern Pakistan so I looked at gender I looked at people from within the society the Puchtoons society who were studied previously from a sort of outsider male perspective almost so my perspective was able to challenge or relook at those ideas but from the women's point of view and from the house the inside out and that was a really interesting study for me because I was able to in some way find my voice and space within academia and of course I was studying at Cambridge with a supervisor who was challenging in a somewhat difficult way and also unfamiliar with my area so that really raised a lot of fundamental big questions for me in academia what was education for at universities was it how did it define my identity as a South Asian British young female how was it giving shape to me and was university was university education really for other things like just because simply it was the things the thing to do for example in Australia there's a concept of the walk about or was it finding identity was it to impart knowledge or to understand ourselves and others was or was it to be simply a good human being so I was asking myself these questions how can knowledge benefit both us and the people in the field in real tangible and profound even spiritual ways how can our knowledge build bridges and do away with the walls of hatred and misunderstanding that I saw around me and to some extent even in those books I found the differences between cultures and religions and I wanted to address that to some extent so after the LSE in Cambridge I was appointed the first director and became co-founder of the Center for the Study of Muslim Jewish Relations in Cambridge this allowed me to combine my anthropology with sociology religion peacebuilding interfaith to see how we could bridge that Muslim Jewish divide and by pioneering these courses in the 800-year history of Cambridge we were able to bring different religious communities together and some rabbis and priests went on to do community projects in London so I saw hostilities change to friendships which was really interesting and then later on in Pakistan at FC College I was able to introduce interdisciplinary courses for undergraduate students here to some boys who had said you know we want to maybe they had some sort of perspective which was negative towards other communities began to empathize because one of our courses was called empathy and we sort of deconstructed the idea of empathy and how sophisticated and important it is for a society to begin to understand the other and so for me as a teacher seeing the perspective change in students minds and perspectives was fantastic and it was a big moment for me so my new book gems and jewels the religions of Pakistan and I'd like to just hold up a dummy of the book here so you know how big it is and it's got many different faiths about 10 faith communities who we explore in the book so I began to set out and learn about different faith communities in Pakistan and I found that the image of Pakistan was very problematic because it was often described as rigid as a monolith there was no complexity in the image of Pakistan it was a very black and white image and in reality as I explored Pakistan and met different communities and different people there was this fantastic array of diversity I was able to meet and interview in this book for example about 10 different faith communities including Muslims Christians Hindus Jews the Jews of Pakistan Parsis the Kalasha the Sikhs the Buddhists the Bahais and so forth and what did I learn for example I learned a couple of different things I learned that a particular branch of Buddhism was nurtured in present day Pakistan with one of the oldest universities in Gandhara in the Gandhara region I learned that Sikhism was born in Pakistan in Nankana and some of the most important religious Hindu sites the Sanatan Dharam are in Pakistan for example Raj Katas which I call interfaith jewels I discovered the Jews of Pakistan and they were very hospitable I met Rabbi Aftab and went to the Jewish graveyard in Karachi and this for me was fascinating because you know in the popular image of Pakistan you you see a certain image which is often negative but you don't see complexity you don't see diversity so this was fascinating for me and then in the book we explore two Parsi sisters and Parsi is again another faith for another name for Zoroastrianism so the two sisters are Rathi and Peran and one sister is in India and one sister is in Pakistan and it shows the book shows and through their interviews we see how boundaries divide just ordinary human beings and how difficult this boundary of not just the physical boundary but also the idea of hating each other or despising the other or the neighbour has brought so many problems to everyday ordinary people like these two sisters so it's a beautiful story and a very moving story and both the sisters are very compassionate and loving so it's even more profound when you study their story and then of course lastly I've put the order of the book the smallest community first and the biggest community in terms of population last because it's a certain South Asian respect where you say it's an adab or respect for the other and therefore the biggest community which is the Muslim community is towards the end of the book and I explore these wonderful saints for example Shah Abdul Latif Betai who wrote a beautiful book called the Shah Jorisalo and that itself is known as the Quran or the Bible of Sindh of this area because Pakistan is divided as you know into four or five regions and one of the regions in the south is Sindh and about 300 years ago Shah Abdul Latif Betai writes a beautiful book called the Shah Jorisalo in which he explores seven stories and these are called the seven queens of Sindh and each story is told in the voice of a woman so the woman is the protagonist and we hear the story through her pain through her challenges through her difficulties so again we're challenging the idea of how gender is perceived in this region so long ago in Pakistan and I found that these stories were not explored either in the curriculum or in the national narrative and I would like to promote that idea because I will explain why later on so the story was no longer of us versus them but this was my story of learning about our human family because here was such a fantastic array of diverse communities so I called the religious community's gems because each faith community has its treasures and gems of stories to tell and each of us though we have our own perspectives must give the respect and space to hear the other so what moves them what makes them cry what makes them joyous all these come out in the book but there's one factor that unites them all and that is their poverty so through their poverty you see that simple humanity of reaching out living together side by side what are the challenges what are the difficulties they face what they're they're still facing racism or sectarianism etc but they're also united we don't get that complexity in the media unfortunately so in the conclusion and in the last few points Dr Akeen and my friends here I want to tell you or ask this question how can I apply my knowledge to understand diverse people seemingly different from me for example this is what I've asked in the book and I've said my studies research books and teachings all taught me that knowledge must be used for a higher purpose for the betterment of the collective human family in the field we as social scientists excuse me take risks as scholars we have to visit fields different field areas as a woman you have to reach out even more leave your family these are all very difficult challenges within that region but we must create courses which are interdisciplinary as scholars by understanding by reaching out by visiting by listening to different perspectives and to by hearing the pain because the world is already in so much pain the genocides in different areas of the world we have a crisis with global economy we've got poverty we've got racial prejudices and hatred so the steps are I would suggest the first step is to hear and acknowledge the human pain in each community each community has its story we must listen to that story and probably even possibly visit the different sites the sites of pain where did the genocide happened where did the stories take place where did the stories of origin take place so it's to learn and teach because I see myself and I'm sure many of you do see yourselves as a teacher but also as a student we're learning and we're teaching we're passing on that knowledge so knowledge in a university is and should be more than what it is it is not old used books on dusty shelves or virtually accessible material with inaccessible language language knowledge must be reassessed because knowledge is passing on the flame of peace which can lead to world healing indeed excuse me indeed Achille Memembe Memembe sorry inspired so as is decolonizing knowledge the whole idea South Asia in particular and Pakistan and Indian the Pakistani and Indian narratives have really adopted an anti-colonial narrative and that in in this narrative um it's the narrative has built heroes to fight or to challenge the invading oppressive villains and as a result for example you have communities such as the Obandes who violently oppose or you know reject anything that is the other especially western or from the Raj time and that sort of narrative is abrasive and violent so even though the invaders may have come in other communities for example in journey into your Europe project which Dr. Yakin is familiar with we went to Bosnia and we witnessed Srebrenica in that the a lot of the victims told us that the genocide was done in revenge for 200 years ago when the Turks came and invaded that region of the world in Europe so my point is the cycle of revenge the vicious revenge and anger and hatred towards the other must be countered and I argue as a native woman who is using the perspective of the minorities who are misrepresented and faced double colonization first from the British Raj and then from the South Asian elite but especially for women women face triple colonization because then you have the male perspective as well so what I'm really arguing for my theory is to decolonize the anti-colonization of the curriculum or the narrative that we have built up which is a very it can lead to an abrasive aggressive attitude what I would like instead is to own our past and to see the pains both the pains and the joys in order to heal because we need that healing and so that will allow us to give way to diversity to multicultural multi-religious multi-voiced and multi-narratives to make a harmonious diverse and respectful whole so what needs to happen in my humble opinion in South Asia is that we need to hear more voices more diverse diverse voices to listen to them to understand and respect people giving them full personhood so each community for example here that I've explored in the book should be allowed to be it should be allowed to express their point of view and their stories and we must hear and respect that and to some extent the council of Islamic ideology in a recent code of ethics made 20 points and one of the points in that is that my people who are non-muslim in Pakistan must be given that respect and space to both practice their religion and to be heard and to be respected so this debate is ongoing and there are the areas where I have worked for example I've worked with the council and with the higher education commission and I know that both are moving towards that direction but also Dr. Yakin in the UK we need to teach this history of colonization and the decolonization of knowledge much more assertively both in schools and in universities through books for example like gems and jewels which give space to multiple voices and perspectives the other because the challenge really is to own our past as I said with all its pains to overcome this these challenges because this is how we will work towards an enlightened future and I think there's no better place to do this than at a university campus this is why the SOAS event is so important and groundbreaking so Dr. Yakin I thank you once again for your very important work and that of your teams behind the scenes thank you very much thank you thank you Dr. Hothi that's very kind and generous of you I mean it's you've raised so many important points and covered so many things that I wanted to talk to you about in in separate parts so forgive me if I return to some of the things that you mentioned so that we can have a longer conversation and as we're talking I also want to invite the participants to put their questions to you in the Q&A box you'll find the Q&A box at the bottom of your screens and if you just send in your questions we will take them at the end of our conversation and try and answer as many as possible the option the Q&A function allows you to submit your question anonymously or to put your name in as you submit it so please audience members do feel free to start putting your questions across to us Dr. Hothi I want to return to I want to return to your biography as part of this journey and what your talk as an anthropologist as a social anthropologist and what this book will talk more about the book as well you mentioned growing up in Waziristan and I was wondering if perhaps our audience members might not be familiar with the significance of Waziristan with regards to both the colonial past and its positionality within Pakistan today and of course your own relationship to it your familial connections to it would it be something that you could tell us a little bit more about? Well that's a really interesting question Waziristan is in the north of Pakistan and it's in on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan so it's it was really a buffer zone during the British colonial rule so it neither became part fully integrated into Pakistan and it was also a boundary where families were on both sides of Afghanistan and Pakistan but because because in 1947 the British laid the Durand line so really cut the cut the land in two and again where I was mentioning the story of Rati and Peran in my book and that's the opposite side on the eastern border where you have the Indian Pakistan border so if their families there who were separated similarly in Waziristan you have this very important area with largely the Pughtun tribe who are based there and this was a very significant area for both both in the colonial period but also for Pakistan but never fully integrated into Pakistan because the Pughtuns had their own identity and that was called Pughtun Wali which is a code of honor and it is you know it is a very respectable and a very interesting culture in itself but often misunderstood both by the center in Pakistan and there's some tension there but also during the colonial period and my father happened to be the political agent so while he was there I grew up and attended one of my first schools which was under literally under a tree and I had a little and a little you know those wooden pens so we didn't really have the paper pads computers things have really moved ahead since then I'm wonderful thank you that's that's excellent to have that historical reference point and I was just reading a section from your book and thinking about in a sense what you've picked up there is that very important narrative of identity formation and how people how people are recognized both by the state by the center by those around them and how people recognize themselves within through their kind of connections primordial connections or other connections community connections as you mentioned the the code of Pughtun Wali and how how that's understood from within the community and how that's recognized from outside the community and in more ways that can lead to particular types of challenges for for how it how the I suppose broader regions react to each other in in those spaces not understanding because you know the idea of nationalism is is of course that we all live together as one happy family but the reality of nationalism is that it doesn't quite happen and and people are pitted against each other within within the nation space and we see that quite a lot in in Pakistan and and and in your book you've been talking to a lot of students as well I I saw that and you've mentioned a few people there in your the the kind of Parsi sisters I'm I'm not sure you know whether they're students or they're what stage they're at but one one of the people that you talked one of one of the women you talked to in the book was with regards to people fleeing regions or being killed for or especially students from minority communities and the fact that you've had situations where homes and villages have been have been destroyed or or they've been you know upsets or things that have led to a lot of dysfunctionality and you say there are open and if I can quote from the book there are open wounds still hurting individuals the nation nations and our world at large and you say this situation led led for Ishta who I interviewed to say she feels conflicted in her identity as a member of the Parsi community from Pakistan now living in Canada so I was just wondering if you could expand on that a little bit but you know those those kind of interviews and identities the conflicted identities that you met and how you mediated or or sort of I suppose built that work into your framework as a researcher I mean that particular example is from a from a Parsi interviewee and I'm sure you will have had interviewees from other communities perhaps that you might be closer to as well so how do you mediate with those across those those narratives of pain as it were and and understand how to construct your own narrative about in this book that you so beautifully present could could you sort of describe that journey a little bit that's a very good question Dr Joaquin and there are many questions packed in that but I'll say that this you're absolutely right the concept of conflicted identity though I would say right at the beginning is not confined to Pakistan alone I think a lot of people a lot of global citizens find themselves in such a situation you know you belong to so many different worlds you have so many different identities you have so many different layers of identities one of the professors in I think it was Ireland described it as an onion so it's the layers of identity that we all have and we all share but going back to Pakistan I would like to reiterate my point of really decolonizing that anti-colonial narrative because that anti-colonial narrative means that we are as a nation there is one narrative which makes us more militant or I won't use the word militant in the way it's understood but it makes any community more aggressive towards the other so the same may be happening in India the same may be happening in Pakistan or Afghanistan where you see the other as pitted against yourself but as soon as we do this what we are doing here Dr Joaquin which is to open up a dialogue and a conversation where we give respect and space to other people and different voices and really hear their pains what are their stories where is everybody coming from can I step into their shoes and understand their perspectives and as soon as we begin to do that we see them not as us and them not as those walls that some politicians or people in the world want to put up but we see them as human beings we see them as a potential brother as a potential sister and then it becomes a human family and that's what I've really tried to emphasize and that's why rather than an anti-colonial narrative I would like to our universities both in the UK and in Pakistan to join up together and in South Asia more largely in India and Bangladesh and other countries to join up and have this global discussion how can we really as a world family begin to move ahead and stop really building those walls of hatred and disrespect because any community that's marginalized or put it into a block or into this stereotypical box is it's completely unfair as you know and I think that is something that needs to be challenged and we need to really begin to respect number one the individual number two the different communities within a nation and number three the nations itself they're no longer these debates about rich nations and poor nations but like decolonization we also have to respect each community and give them their full voice and space and perhaps be more empathetic and understand are they coming from a space of is this aggression coming because of a certain history that was imposed upon them or is it coming from you know their own pain their stories so that's what we need to bring out and of course it needs much more discussion and many more courses but this is what we did with the Muslim Jewish angle and I really found that fascinating because I really saw those hostilities where you know in our classes we had rabbis and we had imams and then towards the end of the courses they were able to sit together and really develop a friendship and similarly with FC college I know one of our students is here on the chat from Pakistan would you like me to read out the questions because we've got a few questions coming up and they're really interesting and I think it will be it'll be great if you might be able to engage with them so shall we start with the first question from Baha who I think is their former student Baha welcome Baha so after participate he she she or he he okay says after participating in your class back at FC college Lahore we went individually and in groups to visit different religious places people and their lives eat with them became friends but in political and state level the people are not allowed to build their religious building even in Islamabad how will your book contribute to influence the policy makers and accept that we are a diverse community and diverse in our strength a few days ago Athef Mia talk was cancelled due to his religion how can we deal with this to overcome politics of hatred and exclusion so excellent questions there yes well Baha thank you so much it's first of all so good to see you develop Masha Allah you came as a student and I know your own ideas from your own background you've begun to learn to love reading you're one of the students who I quote as an example of change in perspective so I really appreciate your participation and your support throughout and that's a really good question you've raised so yes our courses at FC as you rightly pointed out were very challenging because it was a challenging atmosphere it was also a place where some of in another school interdisciplinary courses had been banned because you know there was some controversy around those but in that atmosphere we were able to teach some of these courses at Foreman Christian College and you know some of our students had their own perspectives but at the end of the course the students for example one of the students did say that people of other faiths should be killed which shocked me but at the end of the course and after we studied empathy and understanding and the dignity of difference which was the chief rabbi's book the students said yes ma'am I'm a changed person my perspective has changed I love reading so all this as a teacher I was very pleased to hear because my students are like my children and then my like like my little brother so I really was fascinated and pleased to get that change of perspective and I think that's what universities are about to challenge us but you're right at a political level the change needs to happen so I'm a small scholar a very little person and as you know as a woman I have had my own challenges and sometimes I've been stopped or there've been difficulties in my path but from my own effort and with the support of my family and my father's been a wonderful support and people like professor Yakin and all have been there for me and this has allowed me to do my little work in my own little space and hopefully this books like this will be plugged in you know we will push we will make it our best effort to get the government to listen to get the higher education commission perhaps to discuss these ideas the council of Islamic ideology to be aware of them and that's how change happens step by step it's difficult but one individual can't do it we've all got to unite and by we I don't mean just a little pocket of people in Pakistan I mean all our friends around the world across the world whether they are in the UK or in Pakistan or in America all people who want this world to be a better place want to bring in positive change we've got to make efforts of having debates having academic and scholarly debates but also scholars must feed into policy so I really appreciate your question Baha and I wish you all the best and I hope you go on to do your PhD and influence society yourself and join the team of peace builders okay thank you and if I can just follow on from Baha's question because it is it is very hard to do the kind of work that you did in Pakistan without facing many challenges with regards to your personal safety to the safety of your team who are working with you because you are doing something that is challenging and and people have faced exclusions when they've worked on interfaith or when they've looked to include the minorities within the broader conversation so I just wanted to ask you you know how was it for you and your team with regards to personal safety was that something that you had to build into your research program as you went around doing this very important work were you targeted did you what are the kind of tools I mean it it's easy for me to talk about it sitting from like in London it's very hard to be Dr. Hothi in in those various places that you've been in in Pakistan talking to the various communities and amplifying the voices without encountering the kind of rigidity and closure that we've seen very a number of people face and some people have paid for that with their lives literally so I'm just wondering it would be really if it's possible for you to talk about that a little bit it would be interesting to hear well that's a difficult question but yes there have been challenges and I think the challenges again we tend to see things in slightly black and white in a black and white picture and I'd like to step away from that because I do think that this extreme narrative is present a stream of it is present globally so I see it I see it in America I see it in the UK in some some regions I do see it in Pakistan in India they're different places of the world where we do have that narrative and we need to really encourage the other narrative which I'm trying to you know sort of make space for in my work which is bring in the perspective of the people themselves because sometimes they find themselves voiceless and to give voice to those people is very important for me as a as an scholar as a person who's learning but also someone who really feels for those communities and for our communities whether they're in the UK as I said with the Muslim Jewish communities here or in South Asia with the different communities there but also the larger Muslim majority in Pakistan too needs perhaps more opportunities to have courses to engage with the Shahjo Risalo to engage with these fantastic books and materials that they haven't gotten opportunity to engage with yet so this is what I would love to see because in the book a lot of people from the communities there's one girl called Saeed Gul Kalasha who's done a lot of work and she was on National Geographic she talks about the need for a curriculum reassessment or change and to be more inclusive in the curriculum so that's something you know that I would like to also look into how it can be done and I know the Ministry of Education did have one or two sessions in which I was invited and there was the need to reassess and there were discussions with the Imams and the scholars in Pakistan the religious scholars in order to bring some positive changes in the curriculum and to begin discussions so although it's been 74 years but I do think it's never too late and it's important to begin discussions and work is a world team so we all work together rather than seeing us them this country that country we all work as a collective collective humanity okay wonderful thank you so I think that's very useful to get a sense of you definitely see the change through curriculum and that's very that is a challenging space as you're pointing out with regards to working with the state and then the different parts that deliver the education curriculum and getting agreement in dialogue that sort of agreement is always the challenge isn't it but I'll turn to some other questions there's a question from Eventbrite background I am a UK resident of Pakistani origin brought up in post-partition Karachi I remember going to school with other children of different religions and I'm aware of the former Jewish community in Karachi how different from today's Karachi and the question is so that's the comment the question is how are your views accepted in today's Islamic Republic of Pakistan so I guess it builds on the previous question so so that was about how do you integrate your views and this is about what is the reaction to your views yes well so far to be honest I've had a very positive reaction yes I've had challenges from people as I said globally they've been that stream that negativity has been there but also generally I think human beings want to know each other they want to reach out they want to understand if you really get down to the grass roots and that's where I'm working at and that's where I'm talking about and at that level people do respect each other for example Rabbi Aftab from Raul Pindi he told me you know we are proud of who we are we are yes we're Jewish we're Pakistani but we're proud of who we are so they want to every human being wants to find a space for themselves where they're accepted and they listened to and they found those communities within but we don't get that narrative in the media and that's what's missing okay thank you Dr Hothi we'll move on to a question from Mark and I think this engages with some of your global connections interested in your views on Mark says he's interested in your views on Islam Jewish faith interrelations which you talked about especially given the recent statehood rapprochement between the UAE Islam and Israel Jewish do you see this as a positive interfaith move or pure politics well I'd need to think about that question a little more thank you Mark next time okay all right so we'll um going back to the book um we've talked about the Parsi community we've talked about the Jewish community and you mentioned very important sites for the Sikh community and and the Hindu communities and I wondered with regards to the Hindu community in Pakistan in particular the issue around marriages always has kind of come up quite a lot marriages and conversions and I wondered if you could speak a little bit to that with regards to the research that you've done in your book and how how would you communicate how do you communicate that narrative in your book um I think when I interviewed even with the Sikh communities and discussed this with them they also spoke about forced conversions or marriages and so did the Kalasha community so there is this um there are these um stories of forced conversions or marriages that excuse me of then you know there is this discussion but I want you to remember that the book that I worked on is an introduction so it's not a detailed study of every aspect of religious life in Pakistan it's sort of to wet your appetite so that you yourself begin to think of these questions not just for Pakistan but for how we as human beings live with each other with diverse identities together do we do we all want to build these walls or do we want to reach out and really understand and because there is an important verse uh in the Quran which I'd like to mention which is your religion is for you and mine is for me and that is a sense of well that could be seen as both uh in both ways but it's for me it's a sense of you know we can live together we should live together without this necessity of building walls okay could you could you tell us a little bit more about the Kalasha community and where they are and it's the kind of heritage and the history with regards to how you present present it in the book as well yes well that's a good question Dr Yakin because the Kalasha are for me they're a beautiful community living in northern Pakistan a very small group but originally it has said according to one of the myths one of the genealogical myths that the Kalasha are descendants from Alexander the Great who passed through that region and his army married the local women and um had the small group of women so their dresses their looks they've all you know got blue eyes blonde they're very fair um they look very different to the local population and they've got their own stories they've got their own myths they've got their own challenges they're a very happy group so when we went there in the north traveling there was such a big challenge because there are no proper solid roads to that area so our car was literally on the edge when another car was coming across and it was a very scary drive so I challenge you all too if you are in that region do visit the Kalasha it's a 17-hour drive from Islamabad and but it's fascinating the cultures the dresses the people their stories and their sense of identity a very happy very positive culture and can you tell us about the context of Kaafiristan female priests you know all those things that that's sort of well that's a really good question because um as Saeed Gul Kalasha told me she's the authority on the Kalasha and she said that they are called the black Kaafirs whereas the people in the north are called the red Kaafirs because the black Kaafirs because they wear black dresses with beautiful embroidery and all so they called the black Kaafirs but all of them including their leader Saifullah Jan who's one of the first people to get educated in that area and they don't have schools or universities in the region and they'd love to have those universities and schools uh Saifullah Jan said we are not Kaafir because Kaafir is a negative word it means you're not a believer so you're excluding us you're not no longer perceiving us as one of you you know we're part of Pakistan we're part of the uh the bigger picture so we are we are we are who we are we do believe in God we have you know we believe in angels we have our own understanding but we are not Kaafirs and I found that point really interesting and you know it's to understand the people as an anthropologist as a social anthropologist my subject teaches me at least contemporary anthropology does to step into the shoes of the people and understand from their perspective but they think you know we want to be respected we want to be given voice we're not Kaafir please respect us okay thank you um we have another question from um this is one of my students from uh my imagining Pakistan module here that we that I teach at Sawaz which is a wonderful rich module to to teach especially made more so by the students um who attend it and contribute to it so the question is from Georg he says relating to your remark on Rabbi Afdab who said we are proud of who we are we are proud to be Pakistanis how would you make sense of the statement does it not also represent an enormous pressure on minority groups to identify with the state and society in the hope to belong to the nation and thus be somewhat protected which at the same time often is oppressive towards them um yeah that's a good question uh who was your student uh yogg yogg yeah yogg that's a good question and you're absolutely right there is that sense of um being in a way a your team your team is someone who's an orphan so you're you're you're wanting that parent you're wanting to be protected you're as a community this is the sense that I did get overall that there is a sense of belonging and wanting to express that identity which is part of the larger national identity because there is um another bigger debate going on with you know warring neighbors and all and in that the minorities don't find their their space so they're almost saying you know here we are here's our perspective listen to us and that's what we'd love to give that sense of space and understanding and respect and through our subjects and courses both in Pakistan in the UK and we hope to build more pockets where we can actually have more platforms where we actually bring some of these people dr yakeen on your platform where we perhaps have rabbi aftab we have saeed hul kalasha we have rati sorry parent parent who's not a student from the policy community who you mentioned earlier in fact she is one of the Zoroastrian teachers at canade college canade college is one of the christian colleges in lahore and she teaches literature and shakespeare etc and an amphitheater is named after her so generations of young students have been trained and taught by her so people like that are really gems you know for our human community and human family and i'd love to hear their voices because they i'm i'm just a very ordinary small scholar and a student really who's understanding and listening and would love to see more healing in the world and i'd love to hear those voices and these people and hear their pains and bring them together on your platform thank you um i mean um are you talking about perin perin koopa perin bogey yes yes yes okay okay so miss so i'm a former student and benefit from the drama classes yeah and and i think it's it's well i've had the opportunity of an education of privilege when i was in pakistan and and certainly been taught by a diverse community of teachers coming from different faith groups so that that has made um uh an impact in in how who we are today as you said sort of small uh people but it's it's the teachers who have contributed to that knowledge from from the past um and dr yakeen you'll be very sad to hear that parents sister older sister raki yeah who i interviewed in this book she has passed away just recently oh and so so she was based in india and perin as you know was based in lahore and she taught you know wonderful students like you who yourself have become a great scholar and uh so you have that divide and so the pay the divide is very painful because these barriers that countries have laid out that colonial past has laid out that um you know has divided people that's what i'm trying to get us to think about how we can overcome those challenges um thank you yeah i'm sorry to hear about about the sort of passing away um that's very sad and and how do you sort of share the pain and and you know that's an additional pain isn't it with regards to being in different places and the global sort of issues and the national divisions both come together quite negatively and in those moments of of loss and sorrow um there's some more questions coming up uh from bushrafatma how did you navigate the complex power structures between you someone who is pakistani but also comes from an arguably colonial colonial and social inequality producing institutions such as cambridge and academia more generally and your interlocutors who share to some degree your pakistani identity but do not have access to the complex privileges that form your framework and identity so it's a question of about access to education and having the access and those who don't have the access how do you navigate that sort of yes yeah yeah bush bushra that's a good point that there are these barriers there are divisions there are privileges and are being privileged to study at the University of Cambridge at LSE etc but you know bushrafatma i started in waziristan under that tree with my tachta with my little wooden board so i've seen both worlds and i'm using my knowledge to the best of my ability not in a perfect way in a very human imperfect way um but to give voice to the communities and the minorities and i hope that it will allow some sort of debate and some sort of positive interaction to take place okay so um that that's uh very good to hear and um bushra as you know what so as here we're doing this the decolonized decolonizing knowledge festival and we have the decolonizing working group and the decolonizing teaching toolkit um and it's it's a trying to improve access and um um to to education in where we are and to improve also how um students then get assessed and what are the attainment gaps those are some of the debates we've been uh having and responding to here at so as so i think it's it's an ongoing situation for us but it's a very active participation in the process of decolonizing the question of access in education and and one uh that i'm very passionate about and and certainly try and make these spaces more inclusive and it's not an easy journey it takes a there are lots of structural challenges along the way that we encounter and that we try and shift and and certainly i think we will be continuing to do that as much as possible and contributions and students voices are very important to this process there's a question from um i think i'm sure they're not called event right but but question from event right um asking the citizens of Pakistan need to be reminded that the white third of the national flag is for the minorities does it not come down to education by logic rather than rote in addition there must be greater respect tolerance and understanding to achieve a multicultural society in Pakistan today so that's the question for you Dr Houthi perhaps connects with your influence from Jena's um work as well yes well that's a really important question and uh a point because that's exactly what our work is about it's to you know challenge those narratives and work towards diversity respect for minorities etc so um of course also kaidi asem you know the whole narrative of um giving space to minorities was an important issue he called himself the protector general of minorities and although the white space was designed for minorities you know it's i think it's not that rigid it's not black and white it's not just green and white there's much more complexity and that's the complexity that universities and scholarly debates can bring out and of course my book is not i don't claim it to be a scholarly work i claim it to be just an introduction and for you all to now take up the flag and do your own research and do your own uh reaching out and understanding and what dr yakin is doing is very important because she's building that platform for these sort of debates so that we can really begin to open up that space because this is this debate itself and bringing these points of views together is an important space that she's creating thank you that's very generous i think it's a community effort i'm just sort of a part of the wheel um there's i just wanted to ask you going back to the book there's some more questions coming up that we'll come back to and please keep putting in your questions it's great to have them thank you for being so participate patry to the audience who are listening um um could could we talk a little bit about the buddhist community the gandhara civilization and i mean there's been that whole narrative hasn't there with the thaliban and the the the kind of the destruction of sites and architecture and one of the things that actually really attracted me about your book as well are beautiful sort of sites of the minority communities and their relationships through through through those kind of places architecturally what's available and then also creating their own narratives and context as much as possible but there and there are many but if can we can can i ask you to sort of expand a bit on the gandhara yes well that's a really lovely topic and that's a beautiful really topic for discussion and study because the gandhara civilization and i exploit a little bit in my book through interviews and i'm again as a student i'm listening i've got my note in pad and i'm listening to people who are buddhist from pakistan telling me about the gandhara civilization which was a very ancient 1000 year old civilization but it was one of the universities where people flocked to a little bit like you know so as oxford cambridge these sort of you know or any other university with prominence and people would come here and study and studying and teaching alone was the prize so professors didn't expect a salary but the the the prize was the teaching and so it was this wonderful vibe it's almost like a utopian idea of you know the the most special kind of education so that was a buddhist civilization there in gandhara and then i encountered this very small community in simp and that's the buddhist community and the leader of the community was juman saab and he told me about the poverty the extreme poverty and the difficulty and challenges that they're all facing and also that they're not heard nobody's you know no politician or nobody's really come down to listen to them or to give them space and that really pained me i really wanted to you know sort of help or reach out or connect because it's a small community they're 200 but they are again neglected in simp but i've got pictures of them in the book and again i'd love to you know with people reading the book maybe they'll begin to discover and listen to them because one or two people who were interested in the book they did not know about buddhist incend and they were really fascinated and there were people in the parliament so i i thought maybe that's a good space but what dr yakin has raised is a really good point about the thaliban and how the the bamians statues of buddha were blown up now that was a very sad unfortunate event and obviously a clear lack of understanding of buddhism because when i was ignorant and i did not study buddhism i too had certain ideas about buddhism which i it was purely due to my own ignorance but once i began to discover and study buddha who was sidarta gotama a very special prince who was a prince a man of privilege he had a palace he had beautiful clothes he had a beautiful wife he had a beautiful child called rahul and he left them and he went in search for humanity and for his own sanity and sense of peace of mind he went to search for big questions and answers and he sat under the buddhi tree and he began to you know sort of transcend and really talk about spirituality and understand the world and he came back with some answers and there he was able to challenge some of the status quo and the people who were the religious leaders of the time and also to encourage egalitarianism and respect for other communities and buddha also said the the idea of buddha is derived from enlightenment or when he's reached that sense of that space where he's at peace in his mind and buddha did say that do not build any statues of me or do not build any images so initially one of my interviewers interviewees told me that buddha emphasized that no statues should be built of him but eventually with time you know the followers like there's a really good pashto saying that the peer does not fly but it's it's a pashto saying means the saint does not fly but his followers would have him fly so there was this concept of the interviewee told me that with time as the Greeks came in the buddha was sort of deified statues were made of him in line with Greek understanding and Greek practices and that for me was fascinating because I did not know that so you know of course people like the Taliban or people who were doing those acts those violent unfortunate acts of course did not have the privilege as Bushra rightly pointed out to sit in Dr. Yakin's class and learn and listen and understand and that's what we all need to do we all need to begin to really search and understand and see you know what is the story and those are the stories that I set out to explore and to understand as a student in this book. Thank you and I think if I can share the a little conversation from German that is included in your book if I have your permission to do that you say I asked German who his role models were and he replied my dad our grandfather was my hero but he was unpar illiterate he used to go to communities and help people and give them lectures and tell them quote give your children education so you learn the strengths within you but educate your children so that they understand themselves from almost no literacy now there is about 20 percent everyone wants literacy I mean this is I think your voice everyone wants literacy or I'm not sure if this is German's voice still for everyone wants literacy so they can get out of poverty we are small people and we hope that someone will listen to our avas voice but because we are a small minority people ask what we can give them and we cannot give anything sometimes people want our votes but if we have no voice in the Komi National Assembly there is no one who can raise a voice for us however we spend our lives and we make effort mehnert to make a living with honor is it I think that's beautifully captured in and and sort of just expresses that powerlessness of the individual within the broader construct that is around them and what and how to transform and change society is is very hard from that grassroots level to well from from I suppose because you know for for the elite level you can get very comfortable where you are and what you do and and these these are the uncomfortable spaces that we need to inhabit and we need to interact and dialogue and engage with that you do in your book and that that's absolutely wonderful to see and and I think it also also with him you pick up the question about Pakistani identity and I think this responds to an earlier question and if I have your permission to refer to it again that would be you say speaking about his Pakistani identity he said Pakistan is our mother we are Pakistani and Pakistan is our beloved country. German stated and for Pakistan we will sacrifice our lives there is no doubt in this and then you know he goes on to talk about his his six children and and giving them education and recognizing the challenges and the pains of their community so I think I think that that sort of absolutely captures what was said in one of the questions before also the pressure on the minority community to to validate the relationship to Pakistan even more and to say that I will live and die for the country because because you know that that is constantly the question that is being asked of the minority isn't it are you faithful to the nation are you can we trust you are you the enemy within and I think it's very important that that you sort of capture both sides of the story you know the story that that they they're talking about with regards to what are the challenges of being a minority community and at the same time of reiterating that sort of Pakistani identity but not sort of presenting it as a straightforward relationship I think that that's what was nice in in the narrative that I could that sort of brings it out that that tension so can you then before I go on to the next question the other another community that's very important that you talk about and I'd like you to share more with with the audience with the listeners are the Baha'is in Pakistan can you can you you say there are about 30,000 Baha'is in Pakistan and you know all all these faiths and all these communities they're also connected to the geographical boundaries and the and the regions that Pakistan is historically a part of so it would be wonderful to hear more. Well the Baha'i community I found also a very small community in Pakistan but again very educated people people who wanted to they've already been doing little community projects healing projects discussions debates etc again their origin is in Iran and the founder is Baha'u'llah who talks about the rights of women and men and there's a lot of emphasis on gender and women's space and societies really described as a bird with two wings and one wing is male and one wing is female and without obviously one wing society is dysfunctional so I think there were a lot of interesting lessons in the faith in the community in the interactions which I've explored in the book and of course detailed a little more especially in regard to the women and I'd like the larger Pakistani community to listen to that because there is a sense of respect there is also that double-edged thing where we do need to respect women much more as a society as a community not just as sexual objects but as intellectual full beings with full personhood so I think those debates do need to come out and I was really pleased to meet Dr. Seema in Islamabad from the Baha'i community who taught me lots about the faith and then visited the Baha'i center in Karachi and young Rohanya is running that center she's about 27 and she took us around and showed us the Baha'i center and then she showed us the nine digits the word number nine is everywhere on the building because all the faiths are included especially the nine faiths including Islam and Christianity and all those faiths are included in the Baha'i sense of respect for the other so I think as a student I did not know about the Baha'i community but through my interactions with the people with the very educated people and sophisticated people I began to really see their perspective and understand so when I asked you know what are the worries what are your challenges and they gave an answer which was very unexpected which was that you know all this is part of faith or it's part of written you know God has written all of this so you know stop stressing stop worrying because we have the corona and we have this and that and all these different pressures on us and their answer was you know chill out relax take it easy and understand the world better so their perspective was a was a very interesting perspective for me to learn from I think it's it's fascinating to to hear about the the sort of internal community contexts and also how the religion relationship to gender is within these narratives that you're telling and in my head I was thinking of the of the women priests in the kalasha when we were talking earlier and those and you also map out the very particular rules and regulations that women have within that community as well so you have this kind of empowerment of the woman priest but then you also have those kind of purity and pollution rituals which relegate women in particular places and here you in the Baha'i faith you have women at the center as a centerpiece of the narrative and and and that really gives you know wonderful insight into the different how gender is is sort of not uniform across the country but different communities are building their own or have their own particularities with regards to that as well and I wonder how they negotiate that how does that get get kind of negotiated within the broader nation like do you obviously I suppose you must see a stark difference between the kalasha community and how also because you're not in an urban space well in a highly developed urban space that you are with where you're you're sort of interviewing the Baha'i in far more urban spaces and very kind of developed spaces so in that in itself those relationships to public space and private space changes quite significantly would you say for for women and how they are negotiating those those kind of boundaries and borders well that's a really fantastic and really fascinating question and I think that's another study for a PhD and I'd love to explore that question I know that you're right that the Baha'is really emphasize the gender roles and especially the role of women and so do the kalasha and they have a different sense of space and movement within society than the larger community the larger national the nation but then there's also the narratives of Shah Abdul Latif Betayi which I mentioned in the Shah Joe Risalo if you study that book and use it as a source of study then you have seven major stories and apparently Shakespeare is inspired by one of those stories and wrote his own Romeo and Juliet so if you see that his work comes after for example Ganjavi who wrote Leila Majnu, Leila Majnu, Soni Mahiwal, Omar Marvi all these stories which are romantic stories and romances between a man and a woman are deeply symbolic they're all metaphors for the believer's journey towards the spiritual towards the divine and that again is you know Sufism mysticism and those stories again all come in the woman's voice and a very strong gender role is played here so how do we look at these but these stories are not studied in the curriculum unfortunately in the national curriculum that's the missing link and that's what you know I'd love to again decolonize that anti-colonization of the curriculum because the more we have anti-colonial narratives the more you know masculine in a way the more as almost abrasive narrative is but the more we have a gendered a feminine a more inside out diverse approach we get this fantastic array it's almost like a rainbow and you don't want to miss out on the rainbow because you don't you don't just want a white rainbow you want you know those colors or like a garden you want those different colors you want the shapes and that's what we need with the nation we we need that narrative not just in Pakistan in the UK and in America at the moment so we you know we have these debates going on but we need to make it a global debate about how we decolonize knowledge at university campuses and then how do scholars connect with policymakers to bring out that change for the ordinary everyday person I think that's a very very important intervention and it's it's you know so good to know that you are also structurally part of the HEC in Pakistan and also globally you know you've been part of peacebuilding initiatives and actually not just saying all these things that you are also doing them in the in your kind of work as as we speak and this this book I hope will go out to a lot of people in those spaces so that they also get a sense of of a of a type of a different type of Pakistan that can also be achieved than the one that is kind of often we sort of get stuck with sometimes Baha says I'm a regular participant in their virtual discussions prayers and discussion our most discussion prayers are led by their females okay we have a few questions coming up one is from Azadeh Sobooth I hope I pronounced that correctly or apologies if not thank you so much for your very fascinating presentation and groundbreaking work in decolonizing knowledge I would be interested to learn if there are any scholarly or grassroots initiatives involved in this decolonizing process in order to create space for documentation and validation of local knowledge in particular I'm referring to everyday efforts and resistance of out-of-center communities such as Ismaili, Ahmadi, Nurbakshi, Hunza, Baloch, Bhartouns etc many thanks Shall I take the second question? You Dr. Yakim that's a question for you Oh is that a question for me? Okay well give me give me a chance to think about that and I'm going to hand over to the go over to the next question which is for Dr. Hothi and then I will think about this one and come back from an anonymous attendee thank you so much Dr. Hothi for this very thought provoking talk it's both enlightening and humbling to listen to your experiences and your commitment to the cause of peace building through education and beyond my question might sound quite technical amidst the passionate discussion India and Pakistan both are in turbulent times fighting right-wing fundamentalism and the rich gems of religion are at a risk of extinction in the majority and majoritarian narrative I swing between hopeless pessimism and flying optimism about the role of academia in shaping a stronger narrative to build a culture of tolerance so it's a it's a great question very important question I wonder if you have some thoughts on that well that's a really good question thank you so much for your thoughtful and really important question because that's exactly the point that I've raised I've said in the book in chapter one in fact I've said that look both countries Pakistan and India are nuclear they have leaders that agree disagree they have you know this communal violence going on in some parts and more so unfortunately in India particularly with the Muslims today and it's a very sad situation and I do hope that you know in the process these communities don't suffer because they're really gems as you've rightly said and we want to preserve our national world world community gems because it really belongs to all of us Shajjo Risalo is not just mine or yours or one person's or the others it's all of us so please do read the Shajjo Risalo you know support the communities understand them and I do really hope and pray that the world leaders will have sense and will have better understanding and reach out because I know scholars it's scholars job to build spaces but I do think that we do have a missing connection between scholarship interfaith and policymakers and when we can combine those three with not just teachers but students and people like yourselves especially the participants here who've asked really good questions you know we need you all to be on board and to help shape that narrative because we can't be sitting on the side anymore but we do need to jump in and contribute a little bit however we can okay so I think yes we are in very troubling times it's very very difficult with with cultural narratives being appropriated by both sides for a kind of division that divides us into the us and them narrative constantly and I think yes we have to absolutely try and work I suppose build the critical thinking that is so essential to this process of deconstructing the the false news that we get every day the the social media which is important in terms of having the voice that you're not able to have in other ways through state channels or state networks be in Pakistan be in China be in India but it's also a place that is also used by states as well to to sort of in a in a negative way so to be aware of that and to be aware of how I think that critical thinking skill is is something I think somebody brought this up before about learning by rote and learning through different methods so I think it's it's that method that is being lost in the current process and we see that over here as well in the UK with the education curriculum and how the drive to remove or to change funding structures and funding patterns is moving more and more towards a kind of towards an exclusion of the humanities and I think the humanities is very very important to to a rounded education and in those spaces in those educational spaces much as we need and value and it's very important to have the scientific knowledge and alongside that you have to have the humanities present because it's it's through that those connections through those interdisciplinary multidisciplinary I think that the word nowadays we're talking about is plurality through those kind kinds of relationships do we get a more community that is more I think engaged with what is happening critically around them and and you know we're all busy living our lives and and sort of just making ends meet but at the same time what are the narratives around us who is controlling them to take back control it's important to to have that critical capacity and facility and to be enabled to have that and I think we're finding that that's becoming more and more a challenge even in the global spaces as as Dr Hothi has been saying so going back to Azadeh's question I think I mean it's because I I'm not a social anthropologist and I'm sort of not working within the communities of the Ismailis, the Ahmedinu, Rakhshi, Hunza, Baloch, Prachtounza so I think this is probably more for you Dr Hothi because it's asking for what are the documentations and validations of local knowledges that that are possible in those grassroot initiatives so I think with the work that you've done did you I mean I'm aware obviously of label organizations in Pakistan and of NGOs and individuals and people who do do that sort of work but is there a kind of concentrated effort or a sort of particular way that you see with regards to the decolonizing process of how local knowledges can be made available to two people in Pakistan? Well I think it needs to be more available and that's what you know we've but step by step because you know I've just opened up a little space for the community the religious communities and that too was a huge challenge because you know it's when we introduced the first ever course Baha was a student there at FC College it wasn't easy they were its own challenges they were people who disagreed who agreed and so it's opening up these pockets and of course the question is right there needs to be more needs to be more research more studies more discussions more debates and that's why knowledge is so important because if you take the Pakistani population the constitution emphasizes that knowledge is compulsory or children from a certain age to you know five to sixteen but in reality there's very few people who've actually been to university or to schools and often girls are denied education so once we begin to you know get to level one which is educate everybody and then we can go to level two which is you know this is my humble opinion maybe I'm wrong or maybe I'm right I don't know but we need to begin to you know bring in knowledge and through knowledge understanding and it's a certain type of knowledge as I keep repeating it's a knowledge that allows space for other voices for other perspectives religious communal local all these perspectives must be respected all these communities must be respected and I really get pained sometimes when I hear that a particular mosque or a particular community have been targeted or their graves have been targeted I don't think it's fair and I don't think it's right by any religious standard because every religion that I began to study as a student every religion talked about respect for other people respect for the divine and love for the divine and respect for other people and other communities and also love for the communities so that that narrative needs to be enforced and strengthened and it can be done by people like you all who are doing your own work studying but also asking and questioning and taking the work forward okay thank you um there's um a comment um from um event right and my name is Omochan thank you and my daughter is one of your former students at SOAS Dr Joaquin oh that's lovely to hear and you have both reconfirmed life as a partnership and understanding and yes um Mr Khan the webinar will definitely be available via a recording I'm not sure if we're Facebook live um we have been for some events but we haven't been able to do it for all so we will um we would please watch this space we will put out some information Dr Hothi um you I know I know this has been a fascinating conversation and we could go on forever I mean I still want to chat to you about your your chapters on the Sikh community on the Hindu community and the Christian community as well as Islam the diversities within Islam itself in the book that you talk about sadly we have run out of time and um I have a message reminding me that we have the next event that is going to go on shortly um on this same uh account so we need to wrap up so I wanted to just say a very very warm thanks to you for a wonderful energetic inspiring conversation your work is amazing and I hope that you will continue to grow it further and I wish you huge success with this wonderful book and encourage people to to buy it when it's available uh I think it's it's in the press as we speak coming out very soon so so many many congratulations to you on this wonderful book and if there's any last message that that you'd like to put out before we end um please can you sort of add that and I'd like also to thank Sunil for his wonderful support for the session in the background and for um for sort of all the the tech and the admin team they've been absolutely fantastic throughout this festival it would not be possible without any of them so um Dr Hothi any last words before we wrap up well thank you so much Dr Ikeen I really appreciate the session um the efforts you've made not just on this platform but so many other projects that you've done you've I know you've been at the cutting edge and at the forefront of bringing in that positive change which students and teachers and professors need really appreciate your work I want to say that the book the book my own book project Gems and Jewels the religions of Pakistan has been a learning experience but also a healing experience for me because as we went into the world lockdown with coronavirus I too was diagnosed with cancer and I've had chemotherapy and surgery etc and through the treatment revising the book and editing it and reading the work of Juman and the words of Juman and the Kalasha and the you know different communities gave me so much strength and gave me that force because it came from the heart and it came from these different communities who are so special and I just feel as a world family a world community family we really need to appreciate the good that we have or the precious the valuable gems that we have and it really helped me heal so I hope it helps you all also to see different perspectives and understand them and hear these voices because it was for me a very energizing and healing process and there's a very special word in one of the Abrahamic faiths communities in Hebrew there's a concept of tikkun olam which is the heal a fractured world and that's what I hope this book and so many other works like Dr. Yakin your project will help with our world today in our own small ways so thank you so much for listening to this very ordinary small scholar who would love to see more healing more positivity in the world thank you for joining us and thank you for having me on your platform thank you thank you Dr. Hothi we wish you a speedy recovery good health and healing and you're an inspiration and as we end I have to give my apologies to Rubina who also had a question for us with regards to the Hunza communities in the Al Khan Foundation unfortunately we run out of time but we have seen your question thank you for sending it and Rubina has been I think attending all the sessions because I have seen her name come up every time so I feel as if I should we should award a special certificate to Rubina for for participating in in the festival so thoroughly and completely if it's if it's the same Rubina but thank you everyone thank you very much and goodbye for now and please tune into the next session I I should know what it is but I can very quickly look it up and tell you what we have next which is going to be Heritage and Repatriation Panel Discussion Return of the IKONS project it's going to be brilliant please do tune in if you can and thank you for now and goodbye. Bye bye.