 Welcome everybody. Thank you for coming today. I'm Bonnie Urbay. I host the PBS show to the contrary and produced and hosted the film you just saw. A little bit about myself and I'm going to introduce the panel and then people will make opening remarks and then we'll take your questions. We deal with all issues affecting women families and communities of color on the show both nationally and globally. And of course women in Islam are becoming first of all a much you know the the segment of the Islamic population is growing. We're in the midst of a boom right now. Their issues are becoming front and center in the United States and I wanted to do something about women in Islam whatever the most cutting trend was that was going on issues that are changing. And I was introduced to the co-founder founder of Karama Dr. Al-Hibri whom you saw in in the film and I was blown away by her work and Aisha Rahman is the director of Karama. I couldn't believe there was such an organization and I thought what they were doing was revolutionary. And so and then I went to the Al-Hibri Foundation was introduced to Lynn Kunkel who's a director of programs there and a former member of the board and was fortunate enough to they supported this effort to produce this documentary. And it really there's no issue to me anyway as an observer of Islam that is more important than women gaining or I should say knowing about their equality under Islam and working toward that. And Aisha will talk more about Karama's mission but that's why we did the film. We're very proud we've already we only submitted it for four film festival awards we've won two of them and qualified for a third. I think this is the kind of coverage of women's issues that you will see nowhere else on the internet on TV globally and we're very proud and honored to have been a part of it. Next to me is Aisha Rahman who is the executive director of Karama an organization whose website you definitely have to check out and she will tell you more about what the organization does. I'll introduce the others as we're done. Well thank you all for being here thank you for your kind remarks Bonnie it was a pleasure working with you and your team to to film this work and I think Dr. Alhibri is working on this scholarship and I would I'm probably gonna talk about her a lot she's been an inspiration to me personally and the other founders of Karama really have instilled in me and our team and everyone that comes through Karama's doors the power of education. In fact you know Bonnie just said that women Muslim women should know about their equality and a joke that Dr. Alhibri makes often is that men and women are actually not equal in Islam. Women are much more favored in Islam than men and so when you find out and we don't need to get into all of the nuances come to Karama learn more about us come to our website www.karama.org. Our work is to present and disseminate scholarship about Islam from a variety of perspectives we have scholarship on our website about democracy in Islam about civil rights racial equity and racial equality as well as of course gender equity and so our our mission is to educate and that's what we that's what we're in the business of. All right terrific next is Lynn Kunkel director of programs for the Alhibri Foundation I will introduce Susan and oh my before we excuse me Manon before we get going Lynn is executive is director of programs former member of the board of the Alhibri Foundation whose mission is among many other things peace just social justice and improved interfaith relations in the United States. Manal is a regular panelist on to the contrary I'm very proud to say but more importantly she's acting vice president for the Middle East and Africa Center here at the USIP she's been long involved in elevating the status of Islamic women and other women in developing nations before she came here she worked for Oxfam where she responded to humanitarian crises in Palestine and Lebanon and Susan Hayward give me a second year is director of religion and inclusive societies Center for Governance Law and Society here at the US Institute for Peace and she coordinates the Institute's overall programming in Burma and Myanmar and I'll let people say more about themselves when they do their own introductions go ahead Lynn please. Thank you thank you very much Bonnie it's a it's a privilege to be here on a panel with such amazing and distinguished visionary change makers and I want to thank USIP as well for providing a platform for these important topics to be heard and for these conversations to be continued the Alhibri Foundation is a private family foundation we're based here in Washington DC we were founded just prior to the events of 9-11 so we're still a relatively young foundation but our focus is promoting peace education and respect for diversity but what I think makes our foundation unique is that it's founded by an American Muslim family foundation so we are very sensitive to discrimination against Muslims and we are quite sensitized to the issues besetting and challenging the community as well so you know the work that we do primarily through grant making but as well as internally managed programs is really looking to help develop the skills to navigate across difference and communicate effectively find common ground with the idea of then collaborating and networking for the greater good and I think what's what was really important to us in supporting this work is that the issue of Islam and women is one of the more contentious areas of misperception and misunderstanding about Islam it's a dominant perception among non-Muslims that Islam is authoritarian and paternalistic and anti-women and it has a number of really destructive implications so it's not only a stereotype that's been expounded upon but it also for people who are sensitive to anti-Muslim discrimination they stay on the fence essentially because they don't want to be aiding and abetting a tradition that might be harmful to women and so it's vitally important to allow Muslim women to speak with their own voices and to share their perceptions and share their own struggles I think it's important for us to separate Islam from Muslims Islam is a tradition it's a set of beliefs and values and goals and ideals and Muslims are the inheritors of the tradition that are constantly as all religious traditions are struggling to implement those ideals and so to clarify that is something that's very important to allow American Muslim women our focus in grant making is domestic to give a platform to speak in their own voices a critically important part of not only helping empowering Muslim women to be agents of change and restoring this vision of Islam principle to quality of Islam but it also helps to reduce discrimination when people understand the issues in the narratives taking place so we're absolutely delighted to see this documentary done and so expertly done and handling these nuances a very complicated topic very well thank you and I'll thank you Lynn and that that helps set up my introduction a little bit so from a very young age I was very you know into social justice issues I was almost obsessed I remember from elementary school really just following reading and being very interested and I grew up in South Carolina so there was a red line you know when it came to anything that touched my religion or touched Islam that's where we stopped we didn't question we really kind of just accepted what was taught and there are four women and Aziz al-Hibri was one of those women and you know Niger from I shot from Nigeria there was Omeyma from Egypt and Sharif Al-Hatib who's one of the founding mothers in American Muslim community and along with it was Aziz al-Hibri when I was very young saying some pretty silly things about women in Islam just puppeting what I had been taught and those four Muslim women pulled me aside and said look it's okay to be critical it's not ours it doesn't belong to Islam and so you're defending a lot of things that we actually don't own and it really shaped how I was able to begin to approach not only learning my religion from a spiritual perspective but also my work in social justice and development humanitarian and more recently in peacebuilding as I started off there's a lot that's being done in the name of Islam that you know causes me pain what's more painful is all the good work that's being done because of the psalm that gets no attention and I think Aziz al-Hibri and a lot of al-Hibri foundation is supporting is among that good work but I think that balance is really important it's it's time where the Muslim community is being called on across the globe to bring out the critical hat and to hold accountable those who are using the name of Islam to do a lot of violent action and I think that that's one of the things one of the balances that we're getting right knowing what's ours and also knowing what to call out so that we can be part of stopping it well thank you first of all for inviting me to be a part of this and congratulations to both of you for producing this documentary I think it's wonderful what karma does but also bringing more attention to these kinds of efforts both within the Muslim world and beyond it so these efforts to engage with religion as part of the larger effort for gender equality is incredibly important for the obvious reasons that religion is often drawn on to obstruct gender equality and so you need to be able to engage with religion in order to transform some of those barriers but for other reasons as well one of them being that women and religion are very very interconnected in a lot of ways no matter how you measure it and there's been many social scientific studies that have been done women are more religious than men whether you whether you do that in terms of whether you measure that in terms of religious belief in terms of religious devotion in terms of who shows up for religious rituals and so on by and large across religious traditions it's women who tend to be more involved in the religious community and and in the same way if you flip that women also matter to religion and I don't just mean that you know they're important in terms of cooking for the church potlucks or for the iftar dinners but they're important as actual interpreters and transformers of their traditions of it as enactors of their traditions so when we have this simplistic understanding of those who are the institutional leaders who are often men the clerical authorities within the religious traditions is being the sole ones who shape the tradition that's based on a very superficial understanding of what religion is and how religion is formed and transformed through history now I want to bring in very quickly before we open it up the lens of violent conflict because that's what we're want to do here at USIP and how these play out in violent conflict situations we did an initiative here at USIP with my program the religion program in partnership with the Berkeley Center at Georgetown starting in 2010 that looked at the intersection of women religion violence and peace building and we have a book that was just released a couple weeks ago that offers some of the lessons from it but one of the the a couple things that I want to highlight that came out of that study one is that we know violent conflict affects women in particular ways and in disproportionate ways especially when it comes to sexual violence that that modern warfare has created has put a great strain on women in particular in their bodies in particular but there's this flip side to violent conflict when it comes to gender and that's that violent conflict also creates opportunities for women it disrupts social norms in some in some ways and so women often have the ability or are required by necessity to become leaders within their communities in the absence of men who maybe are fighting in the wars they have to come in and serve as leaders within their communities in order to ensure the protection and the needs of their communities and families are met and this has an impact on religious communities as well so not only do religious women come to play more perhaps influential roles within their religious communities in the midst of violent conflict but religious women become visible leaders within the wider community and society as well and as they do so as they become community leaders they draw on their religious traditions and teachings historical figures women figures in the past who served as leaders within the community peace builders within the community in order to defend their agency and their position as community leaders and they do that to defend themselves against religious gatekeepers who would try to obstruct their work as well secular gatekeepers who would say that religion is irretrievably or vocably anti-religious and that religious women should act in a certain way and this is important for transforming religious traditions and understanding so violent conflict to actually create the opportunities for for some of this creative interpretive work that I wouldn't say is reform but more going back to original sources a retrieval of teachings that are within religious traditions and another just quick anecdote that I want to share from one of the case studies in this book from Israel Palestine is the ways in which some of the work that's being done there that's similar to what karma is doing in terms of looking at the tradition and understanding how the Islamic tradition has been you has been interpreted in ways that have reified male privilege or male dominance when when the women who in this Palestinian village have studied the tradition and the evolution of the tradition in that way and brought that gender analysis or lens to the tradition it's actually opened up their analysis and understanding of power dynamics generally within their within the wider society so getting that gender analysis understanding how even something as sacred as religion can be interpreted in ways that bring in human fallibility human privilege and so on allows them to also look at majority minority power dynamics at political dynamics in ways that bring that sort of critical lens and fuel activism in a larger sense as well fabulous thank you I want I first want to ask the audience we'll open it up to questions in a minute I do want to ask the panel one or two questions first but if there are members of the Georgetown or GW Muslim Student Association present if you all could raise your hands because I specifically want to direct some questions to you I see no hands up okay all right anyway or webcast right exactly or webcasting as well please anyway so you talked about women you know women Islamic women in the United States having a an incorrect view of their rights and place and power in Islam how do you counter that I think it's globally a lot of times what we're finding is that you know it's something that I call religious illiteracy in general and you know the understanding of the role of religion for a long time has been divided out between public and private and so the teaching of religion has been absent from a lot of schools and a lot of discussions in the public field and so that really limits people to understanding religion as their parents are teaching them and for and I'm speaking specifically about immigrant communities which is my experience because I think that there's a lot of layers when you're talking about American Muslims particularly if you look at some of the more you know the American Muslims who've come since the beginning of the creation of America I'm talking about the immigrant experience where Islam is taught very much at the time that the parents have left so you know my parents left Palestine in the 1960s and so I've been taught in 1960s Islam it didn't necessarily progress the way it's progressed in other cultures you find that in rural areas so for example in some really remote areas in Hadramot or when I was in southern like in Karbala and Najaf in Iraq I was being told things like women can't work even though I learned that all of that is not part of Islam and so there are certain things that we're being taught that's more within a cultural patriarchal system that is being taught as Islamic tenants and once we start to really know the religion it's incredibly liberating which is where Aziz al-Hibri and Karama's work and there's you know women living under Muslim law there's several organizations that help capture what does Islam actually say and I found that just in terms of a lot of the work that we're doing on the ground to be the most useful versus simply quoting which is equally important UN resolution 1325 or see it all it doesn't have the same traction in the field the way you are when you're quoting Islamic texts and Susan what are there any findings in your book that pertain to that question I'm sorry how do you how how is the is women's rights as they see themselves under in Islam is there a more educated view in the US than there is in other countries or what are what is Yusuf doing to try to expand that education I wouldn't say that it's necessarily there's more of that in the US than there is in other places there's incredible work that's being done within the Islamic world that has put women into incredibly in some ways even more influential leadership roles than in other religious traditions with which I work particularly Buddhism for example Christianity a lot of Christianity a lot of the Christian world doesn't allow a lot of space for women to serve as religious authorities but within the Islamic world you have women serving as jurists as Sharia judges as televangelists in Egypt and other places you have women issuing fatwas and so on and so there's a lot of precedent for for Islamic women receiving the kind of education and support they need to be seen as religious authorities one thing that did come out of this study is just how important is that religious education though because you know whereas women can study the the texts and the traditions on their own with one another and so on it's the actual going to the institutions and the schools and getting some of that institutional authority that has a lot more sway in terms of shaping norms both within the tradition but then outside of the tradition and society as well so that was one of the recommendations that came out of this was to strengthen religious education for women again across traditions not just this in Islam I would argue also just to kind of piggyback off of that I think one thing that we see a lot and I can talk personally about my experience as well I grew up with an immigrant family as well and I was I reflect a lot on my name and the story of my name and how I was named and Aisha for those of you who know the Islamic tradition was a very powerful woman and one of the first scholars of Islam much more learned than many in her community responsible for teaching men and teaching women about the tradition and this is kind of going off of what both Manel and Susan have said about really going and looking back at authentic sources and getting inspired by the tradition from 1400 years ago as opposed to modern examples of which there are many as well and I would say that the disconnect in the US a little bit is that families if I could speak generally are doing a pretty good job of teaching their kids about Islam and teaching about gender equity but we're not seeing it necessarily in the institutions and so you know if a woman like me who's inspired by the legacy of Aisha will then go to the mosque and I'm told that I you know have to go in through a back door for example it doesn't ring clear to me that that's that there's a disconnect in the the knowledge that's being given maybe to the men maybe to young boys and to institutions and I think that the Muslim-American community is very involved in in addressing these issues and I would say that there is a institutional push for education and a balanced view of going and looking back at authentic sources so that's that's the hope that we're going to get there and learn your thoughts well I can just say briefly I think it's interesting that you mentioned what whether there were MSAs that were here because college campuses are often these huge intersections where you know Muslim students female students encounter this huge diversity of interpretations of the role of women what they should be and not be and it can be a culture shock because it's not the way they were raised or the way they were brought up and yet they're being told authentic Islam is this that and the other and it can be a traumatic experience and it's an also an opportunity for education on college campuses you know a major push globally that started just maybe five or perhaps ten years ago is bringing men into the discussion involving men you have had events here at UCIP about organizations that do this that that not not in Islam necessarily but perhaps also in Islam and I'm just not aware of that but what is the role of advocates for women in Islam to also talk to men and point out to them where their understanding of what's in the religion and what is cultural needs to change I know that you for example Dr. Al-Hibri has told me that she takes a very karma takes a very gentle approach the idea is not to ruffle feathers not to upset anybody it is to educate yeah so the gentle approach is is the Islamic approach I would argue I think that we have in our tradition and I seen Dr. Al-Hibri speaking to to men and to women and our greatest asset is Islam in fact if you are teaching about the Quran for example and you're teaching about the Sunnah of the Prophet peace be upon him who was a man you can you you already have the support that you need and so it doesn't need to be so gentle necessarily it just needs to you need to speak with authority and you have the authority in the religious tradition Karama educates men and women the only program that we have that's exclusive to Muslim women is the one that's featured here in the documentary which is our law and leadership summer program and we do that for many reasons mainly because women aren't always given the space that they we want to create and so we do create that with our summer program but every other lecturing opportunity we have is for men and for women and I will say it's interesting and again I'm talking about Dr. Al-Hibri a lot and she seems to be the famous person here that we're remembering but I brought her book with me this is her first volume she'd probably be embarrassed if I were if she were here that I was I brought it with me but I found it to be very inspiring and this kind of goes to the Al-Hibri Foundation that she dedicated the book to two men in her life that supported her work from the very beginning one is her husband and then one is her brother God rest his soul in peace who always believed in gender equity and he was the founder of the Al-Hibri Foundation and has always supported her work so the there are good men in the world and there are good men who are supporting gender and gender equity and and that is in fact the Islamic model so I think that there is a role and there is an importance to engage men women and children in learning more about Islam. I see you nodding profusely so please share your thoughts with us. I would say yes I mean that you know involving men and you know one of the things that our Gender and Peacebuilding Center has done has really you know focused on the role of men and I would say specifically on masculinities and as they say that that's plural because there are several different forms of masculinity especially when you're looking at the areas that we work in which is violent conflict so you know the two things that are often defined as masculinity particularly in my part of the world which is Middle East Africa is the ability to provide and to protect and so in violent conflict you've stripped men away of their two core definitions of masculinity not that I agree with that definition but that's the overall so you know being gentle is very important because they've already been stripped away from what is seen as a core definition of masculinity and that can put them in a position of defensiveness and one thing to be more aggressive at the slightest bit so it's very important it's incorporated in programming you know when we do conflict resolution when we're looking at negotiations we're always looking to make sure that we're not over you know we're not creating a divide by you know just focusing on women and leaving men out and this is particularly important too when you're looking at development programs like microcrite or other areas and the other area I think Susie already touched on new social contract so you can have a full contract with now men being there for the negotiations and I would say it's also when we forget men we're putting a lot of pressure on the women so we expect those two or three women who end up being in Parliament or if it's a quota the 25 percent of women who are in part we expect them to represent all women's issues and that's very unfair and sometimes it will put women it's setting them up for failure because we're not sharing that lobbying and that expectation on male representatives and we should so women's rights defenders can be men and they should be men and our targeting should go to men I would add that I've added you know I'm a huge proponent of the gentle approach but I would say gentle but firm there are a lot of men who will try and convince women not now not now we've got to be stronger as a community everyone's attacking Islam we don't want to give them ammunition you hear a lot of that rhetoric and I'm always repeating not now equals never so the firmness is also important you want to be gentle but you know we're not asking for anything this is our God-given right and it also leads to more peaceful and stabilized society so in fact we're doing them a favor when we agree to be included versus them doing us a favor by including us and I don't know can you talk about specific verses in the Quran that have been misinterpreted in the West to mean not equality for women and how you see them or what your counter is to the the incorrect Western interpretation so first I'll start with saying that I think it's dangerous to cherry pick verses and sort of talk about them outside of context I would be doing Karama and our work at this service if I actually were to engage in that because we do believe in scholars of the Quran painstakingly looking at there's actually a methodology for analyzing verses the first and foremost being an incredible knowledge of Arabic which which I don't have and and then kind of building on how and when a verse was revealed and what was the reason for it being revealed and then you know how it has been misinterpreted or how words have been mistranslated but I will say you know Dr. Hilbrough in the video clip that was shown was talking about one verse that I think is very often misunderstood and it's talking about men being caretakers and providers of women and I think feminist sort of bristle at that like I don't need to be taken care of or what does that mean to be taken care of or does that mean that you're in a subordinate position because someone is taking care of you and in fact it's not and if you read you know the Quran and it's as a whole and you use other verses in the Quran to interpret their verses that's another thing that Karama is engaged in doing the Quran explains itself and it talks about how men for example have an obligation to support women and children and others in their family financially whereas women do not have that obligation for example that's one of the ways that I was talking about men actually being disfavored as opposed to women being favored in Islam any money that a woman inherits that she earns is hers and hers alone and she has no obligation to support anybody with that money for example and so many will bristle and say well you know women inherit less than men well men actually have to use their money for people other than themselves women don't and so in the end they actually benefit more so these are just kind of you know broad strokes on some of the things that we explore in much more depth at Karama and again I encourage you all to come to our some some of our educational programming to get into these nuances a little bit more so what I can do Bonnie's give you an example of how this gets lost in translation when we're looking at programming in the field so for example in Iraq because of you know to jump on me because of the verse that was just quoted there was a popular perception among the coalition provisional authority which was the US led authority that Islam doesn't believe in women leadership which sometimes gets translated into no woman judges and so despite the fact that in 2003 one of the people who was appointed to be sworn in as a new judge was a woman the CPA decided not to swear her in saying that this would offend the Islamic tradition so what the judge did who was from Najaf so she came from a very holy city she went to imam to Ayatollah Sistani's office who you know has a lot of moral authority across the south and asked he said I'm being told that women can't be judges because of Islamic tradition and Ayatollah Sistani came out and very rarely at the time was he giving written fatwas he was only giving verbal fatwas he actually came out with a written fatwa that said that she could be sworn in as a judge it was the US led CPA that decided not to uphold this fatwa by the Ayatollah which has hope you know moral authority across the region because they didn't want to offend a very small group of Sadras who were doing protests so again you can see where it gets lost in translation when we adopt stronger religious or cultural relativism more than the region another example is in Yemen where you know there is a lot of you know discussion across the Muslim world about the age of first-time marriage and you know you people use the example of the Prophet's wife said it's not I should to debate the age and so there was a huge campaign as we know Yemen has one of the worst statistics when you're talking about maternity about birth rates I mean it's it's absolutely horrific it's the lowest in the region and among the lowest in the world and so this campaign on early marriage and part of it include traditional birth attendant training was absolutely essential but people were pushing back pushing back the religious leaders were pushing back when we went and had conversations with some of the religious leaders it was the word early that they were disagreeing with because they felt it entered into a jurisprudence debate and so I asked you know well here's this thing that's causing harm how do we deal with it if you're not willing to issue a fatwa and embrace this campaign and so their advice was take out early and replace it with safe because once you change the word you don't enter into jurisprudence of first-time marriage you enter into safety and there's a huge there's a whole set of laws that apply towards child protection said invoke those laws avoid the jurisprudence debate and will support it and then they supported the campaign this but the safe translate in that interpretation into 18 or older it does because what you do then is show the medical we managed to raise the age to 16 legally and what we were because all the medical reports and this was coming from Yemeni doctors and then we were also able to show harm to the to the economy so we had economists and then we so it as long as you were able to show harm to the community which we were very easily I mean there's so much statistics about women who have childbirth early that we were able to present that and again the statistics aren't just for her own individual health it actually affects community actually raises domestic violence so through those we were able to get it up to 16 that was where the compromise came but the work continues and again just having the religious leaders come in at the time where people were arguing 8 and 9 which is a lot of the average agent not the average but a lot of the ages in Yemen or Susan would you like to respond to all I would like to respond to one a couple questions ago actually if it's okay because I've been ruminating on it still and it's this question of engaging men which is incredibly important obviously for a lot of different reasons that have been named but I would also just caution one thing one thing that I've seen and is part of this study is that the religious women tend to get marginalized from two different fields in which I have a foot in each one of them is the religious peace building field which engages with religious actors and organizations and is tended to privilege male clerics but the other one is the secular women's peace building field secular in quotes but the secular women's women's peace building or women's rights fields have tended to look a scans at religion believing in seeing the ways in which it has been a barrier to women's empowerment and so as a result they tend not to see religious women as allies in their efforts and so to the degree to which they have begun to engage with religion seeing it as important to engage with religion in order to advance women's rights they too have tended to go kind of leapfrog over the religious women to go straight for the male clerics assuming this sort of simplified understanding of religion that that's the source of authority and tradition and what shapes the traditions and so religious women have tended to be marginalized and invisible to both groups so while I think it's very important to engage with men I just want to reaffirm again that that religious women play a very important role in shaping traditions and shouldn't be marginalized from the women's peace building women's rights movement as well it really is a double-edged sword in a way I mean you need them you have to have men involved or women will never reach parity on the other hand when a lot of resources go to men's groups they come out of the same budget that would have gone to women's groups and it's really it is I've noticed a two-edged sword any thoughts Lynn that you'd like to share I'm grateful that I should invoked Fort El Hibri and Ibrahim El Hibri the late Ibrahim El Hibri as founders of the El Hibri Foundation we've been great dedicated champions of the work of Kurama since 2003 you know we really understand and value the work and so I'm grateful that we had a chance to mention him all right we would like to open it up to audience questions please if you will I believe there will be people walking around with microphones and so if you will please raise your hands and I will get the young lady here with the glasses and wait please introduce yourself say who you are and what you do and why you're here hi my name is Manel I'm an international affairs major and I'm Muslim so I really wanted to come and see this whole panel my question is is for the Kurama Foundation as well as USIP members such as Manel and the highly esteemed Susan as well for when you go deal with women in other countries such as Iraq and Palestine and Lebanon we live in a society where if you were to teach me a different way of Islam and interpreting it in a different method I am able to live in that sense like I'm able to carry out my new way of thinking of Islam safely they don't so how do you kind of counteract the fact that yes you can teach someone but they're living in a region where they can't fully like live if that makes them safely and carry out like their thoughts and their aspiration good question so you saw a little bit of the clip of our work in the Maldives and I think they'll use that as an example Kurama is a global organization we do education globally and I think it's not so the first step of really affecting change is education so you have to believe it in your heart that this is actually what Islam is saying otherwise you're not going to be in my opinion this is my opinion you're not going to be inspired to really advocate for that an impact change so the first step is you yourself having knowledge and and figuring out what's what's right and being analytical so I think that one of the things that Dr. Hilary was talking about in the clip is that in our education at Kurama we don't want to just tell you what Islam is we want you the global you to be able to listen to others who are telling you what Islam is and be critical and analytical in how you're thinking about that to see if it makes sense to you not to say that you would often disagree but maybe you do maybe you don't and you need the tools to figure that out once you do that you actually can look at laws for example so Kurama is a legal organization so I can speak about that from a legal perspective in the Maldives we were actually invited to talk about their women's protection bill which tracks pretty similarly or closely to VAWA in the US and it was interesting because they say that they are governed by and that bill was inspired by Sharia and when we looked at you know some of the nuances of how that was going that law was going to be implemented it didn't track with what our interpretation of Sharia was and so we engaged in education and advocacy to judges for example who had very you know they were very senior level judges who were sitting with our scholars and Dr. Hilary was with me on that trip as well and talking about divorce for example in Islam and does a woman have a right to divorce and if there is harm like if there's domestic violence is she entitled to her the bridal gift or the maher so it was interesting because first step is knowledge and then you do have to transform your society because once you have knowledge then you get into advocacy and changing the law and that's where Kurama why we have this global law and leadership summer program is that we want to give women other sisters to be working with them so that you're not just an agent of change by yourself you have others who have that same knowledge with you who are willing to to really transform the society in which you live. Other responses please. I would add that you know for me when I go in I don't see myself ever teaching or you know even training or anything particularly on Islam I'm not a scholar and I tend to fall when it comes to Islamic law and Islam I tend to fall more traditional line in terms of believing that someone has to have a jazz and stuff like that which I do not have so I'd be very hesitant to provide any type of ruling or type of experience but what I do is as you know again as a peace builder as a negotiator I ask a lot of questions understanding that you know the most important thing and across the board and Syria is intent what is the original intent of the law and so I will ask and usually I'll ask someone with a jazz I'll just keep asking a series of questions until they get to a point where they're they understand the contradiction and then they'll help with the ruling my experience is if I point out the contradiction or I come out kind of guns a blazing trying to initiate change the resistance is very strong and in a lot of times it has to come with people from moral authority when we do this in the security sector we would never go into the Ministry of Interior Ministry of Defense and start telling them how to run we find people with moral authority to make the changes and I follow that same approach with religion who has the actual moral authority I love a line that one of the scholars I study under has said to me before and he said you know my job is to make you less vulnerable to the local emem and I think that that's a very wise sentence from a scholar because it kind of feeds into what Karama is describing like by knowing instinctively wait a minute that's not what I'm taught you may not actually be able to contradict the ruling or provide it now I was you know surprise surprise every now and then I get really into a moment and I did challenge an Islamic scholar in Jordan which then led to him calling me a moustache to an infidel which in Jordan is illegal and so I had to go all the way up to the Supreme Court to have the charges denounced because I had contract which it's something until now I insist was not Islamic but it took it took three hearings before I was finally released and so you know that was just an important lesson for me to remember what your point which I'm not in America when I'm making these statements I have to be really careful because they do have the final authority to label you that legally I mean I can call them all I want it's I don't have any you know jurisdiction or anything and so it is important that that when you negotiate in the way you do it is done in a very sound way where you're not actually putting yourself or putting the people if you are doing training into any danger how long did that take I'm just curious to get three weeks three weeks and that's fast though yeah it was fast I mean obviously because I'm American and got to the forefront and I was very lucky because the higher council was absolutely brilliant and and you know I told him I consider myself to have chosen Islam like even though my parents were Muslim so it was actually in the end a very good thing but it would have not allowed me to travel if I hadn't gone so fast is there anything in the book that addresses this question of you know you get this knowledge but you're overseas in a community that hasn't heard it yet and isn't really open to listening to what do women do well I mean the one thing that I've I've seen and struggled with time and again being from the U.S. Institute of Peace is just the the sensitivity with which we need to work so that we're also not not putting at risk and not undermining the authority of and the safety of those who are who are doing this work on the ground and so there are certain baggage that comes from being from an institute that has a connection to the U.S. government has United States in the title has peace in the title especially in some of the places that I work in in South Asia peace building is seen as as a euphemism for neocolonialism or Christian missionizing are all these kinds of things and so we have to constantly be sensitive to ensuring that the ways in which we support convene bring people together ask questions and so on is is done in a way that that doesn't again target the work that is being done by people on the ground which is what we're supporting we're not bringing we're not bringing in foreign interventions or actions but trying to support those in the ground who are already doing the important work of peace building that doesn't put them at risk or doesn't get them painted as this is just a Western agenda to bring in elements that are foreign to the traditions into into our context and so it's a question that I constantly ask myself and and a dance that I have to continually do and and I take my cues from those on the ground about how best to support them. Lynn I would ask you to comment too but you're the foundation deals with U.S. issues. Yeah okay next question please yes. I thank you very much for your efforts and work but I feel here is something missing which is very important to bring specific points of equality in Islam to the West and to everybody. First of all things women Western women in Europe or America have gained maybe last century like the right to vote for example in Islam the right to vote from the beginning of Islam which called al-bay'a and also women in the 60s of last century seek to have bank account in France could not do it without her husband consent. Meanwhile Muslim women have the right to a business manage their money even our own profit was employed by his wife. It's very important point also to keep women's dignity after marriage she is to keep her maiden name she doesn't take her husband's name which indicate in my opinion especially in Europe when it started. Started because marriage for women means men's own her she becomes one of his property that's why she gets his name not out of respect I'm sorry to say that. Meanwhile Islam asked women to keep her maiden name so you find in all Islamic countries they have their maiden name so that's why when she is divorced getting married again she doesn't have to keep changing her name from husband to husband so this is keeping women's dignity and also women like she said Aisha said she can work but of course with consultation with her husband because the very important thing in in Islam is the small family because it's actually the the asset of the whole society. If the small family is good society is good that's why it has to be coordination between the husband and wife does not have to be I mean the husband doesn't have to be in control he has to consult she has to consult our prophet used to consult with his wife and also he married one lady because she was very smart and she has she has she was wise and her opinions we were being taken by him also in a wartime he has consulted with her and he took her opinion. Meanwhile you find men now feel insulted if they are if they ask their wife so I mean many things should be brought up especially for Western society to know the difference that's why we have to concentrate on equality points not to speak generality points Islam does that Western woman got it I don't know 1900 years later meanwhile we have it more than 1450 hundred years it's written there so we have to bring it up we cannot just keep talking general information this is my my point thank you. And this gets to the point of you know you know research shows that when people talk to Muslims or they get to know Muslims their perception of Islam just improves dramatically just we don't have enough Muslim women to to speak to everybody to change their perceptions which is why a documentary like this is so important because it provides that platform to amplify and precisely the point that you're saying we do need more of that absolutely I hear any response or I agree I agree I think there's not and it highlights that last point I was making to that the importance of not assuming that this is a Western agenda that's being brought that's not indigenous to the tradition itself and that goes for the other religious traditions I work with as well sorry I should have I would strongly agree but you know again just just highlight the reality that we lost it you know so if we travel across the OIC nations the organization of Islamic countries so not limited to one region if we look at you know OIC as a whole and we look at the statistics that you talk about today you know whether it's literacy whether it's women and leadership but you know we are far behind we're we've lost the tradition and I like that you pointed out we're not talking about a reform we're talking about a revivalism this is often what I say the word reform is misleading in Islam because then you're assuming that the religion was static and it's never meant to be static if you go to a revivalism what you go to a reconstruction to the original structure then you have the liberation but that's the only thing I would add because oftentimes particularly you know we're so proud of our tradition which I know I am that we then feel disconnected from the reality for people who don't know the tradition you know again for my neighbors in South Carolina they're always calling and saying you're you know you've always said this about Islam but I'm seeing this being done help me understand it and I'm lucky that they're calling me I love those who call me there are so many people who aren't calling who are walking away and saying Islam religion of peace I keep seeing that slogan and that bumper sticker but all I see is violence and I think we need to own that disconnect to be able to be part of the bridge-makers between those two realities because they are both real yes the woman in pink hi my name is has your name a reporter covering women's issues and also I work for the international organization for migration in that conversation you insisted on the fact of bringing men to the conversation now they are also women I don't know if I should describe them as religious but who believe in very gender segregated roles within the context of Islam so the conversation might be different while we deal from a woman to a man from a woman to a woman the conversation might defer what would be your suggestion how would you address this category of women so can what well how do you reach out to have or don't or do you not you don't have to bring in you don't have to bring them into the same room I mean I you know almost all the training I do in Yemen is strictly women and and in some parts of some remote parts that you know there they won't even uncover in front of other women and so you know and I've had trainers who find that offensive say I won't train unless they remove and you know I have a strong rule of no stipulation on knowledge and that goes both ways it goes whether you know women who don't want to cover and women who want to cover to the full extent so if that if that's their conditions they want to stay segregated they there's very easy to respect that that doesn't mean that you isolate men you can have separate events for men that are going on at the same time and stuff but you know I I generally fall cues from the women in the field so whatever their comfort zone is is what I follow I think we also I agree completely with what Manal is saying and I think part of what I don't think if you are teaching Islam especially in your you come from the tradition it's not our job to judge another and to say well your way of learning is is wrong and I'm going to impose how I want to teach you on to you I don't think that that's appropriate and so I think you do you have to figure out what people are comfortable with and teach within that paradigm because as as Manal said there is no stipulations on education right you should educate as you wish and sometimes and for me and this is me personally it's really hard sometimes because I know that certain men will never recognize my authority for lack of a bit I don't live in power paradigms but regardless just because I'm a woman or just because I whatever X thing I'm young I'm this I'm that you know they may not believe what I'm saying or even give me the space I don't think that I so that used to be really difficult for me to understand because that's not really my frame of reference but I also think that that's not my job necessarily to make you believe me and maybe sometimes you do pass it along to a friend of yours a male friend of yours who may be able to bring them along one thing that we learned in Karama a lot is that Islam is was gradual you know it didn't come as a we're just going to knock all of the stuff out of the park you know all of these notion like you know female infanticide was huge in the time that Islam was revealed and Islam came to demolish that and then all of these other women's rights came forward but it was gradual it was like you're working in this society and to really has sustainable change you have to work gradually over those 23 years of the Prophet talked about Islam and so the same thing I mean our society is still the same we have to gradually impact change and so you work with people regardless of what their beliefs are in the grey sweater please you yeah thank you hi my name is Karen I'm a journalist who is most recently based in Tunisia for the last two years and just looking at the title here Islam culture and sexism what needs to change I just have a perspective I was at the time covering a story that related more to mosques and religious leadership but one of the problems I guess in my perspective problems I noticed in regard to the story I was covering was that there were a lot of texts like books well written well published in nearly every mosque across the country that perpetuate a lot of sexist you know quote-unquote extremist or ideas that we wouldn't you know normal Muslims wouldn't support but they come from I mean a lot of them came from the Saudi Arabian government I won't hide that but they talk about these subjects they use scholars as their sources it's you know really written in a very believable religious fashion I guess it doesn't say go out and kill people or you know beat your wives but it says you know wives should stay at home and they should respect the man and things like that and I just kind of wonder how would USIP or any other organization that does work on the ground these countries counter something like that that you know you're coming in as an organization that isn't religious in nature battling these books that come from you know a religious country with religious scholars labeled in them I don't know what's the practical or feasible approach to that kind of an issue well I would think you know our job is USIP isn't necessarily to counter that specifically but what we do is we really see the natural voices that are there and it differs from place to place so whoever's arguing in Cairo can't be the same person who's arguing Alexandria can't be the same person who's arguing in Menya like when I say local I mean really local not just country-wise and you know we work with those who are naturally there and we might just add a little bit of resources and technical assistance in terms of what's worked elsewhere so for example with Iraq you know we would use Susie's experience as someone who works within the religion field and she would really work with just sharing the different experiences and facilitating so you know someone very much tied to the religion and peace building world not just for example me who's more of a geographic expert or civil society expert we actually bring people who have the technical knowledge to talk about how to shift change I think the good news what you're describing I hear everywhere you know Gulf in general Saudi and specific in terms of the texts and the funding I was at the Islamic University which is under the umbrella of OIC and Kampala and Uganda and I was very curious to meet with the women which were a few women on site and that was actually their number one complaint was they're saying well now that we're actually learning to read we have questions about what we're reading it's it's very different than what we know instinctively to be true as not only Muslim women but African women like we're powerful we know that and what is this text that's saying that's different but I think what's interesting was that shift like one woman in Kampala told me she said you know the first verse is read now that I understand that and now that I understand the power in reading not only do I want to be literate and she's now training young girls to read and to read Quranic texts because they don't want to depend on the short simple summaries that are being given by but you know that particularly you know I'll just say the Gulf more more widely because I don't think it's only one country so I also I think that I don't believe in censorship I think that you know we should the books are there and whether you want to pick them up and read them as your choice but I think women especially and men who support women have an obligation to propel female scholarship particularly about Islam so I think I mentioned when I started that Aisha Radellana was one of the first scholars of Islam and she taught Islam and the reality is and this documentary shows how many women jurists and scholars there are that are writing about Islam and I am constantly amazed when I go around the world where so for example and you know Dr. El-Hibri was one of the first scholars of Islam male or female to talk about democracy from an Islamic perspective in the US for example and yet when people write about it now they don't cite her that's another part of this patriarchy right there's citation of male scholars citing male scholars and I'm not saying that because it's hurting her ego that someone is not quoting her it's not about that it's about elevating those voices and rec and giving attribution which is so important and so I think that when you're talking about books for example there is funding we talked about funding before there is funding for certain kinds of scholarship more than others but it's it's going to be a gradual process but I think even in academia I'm always amazed at you know this male privilege and male scholarship kind of being given more weight than females and I think that we have to start citing say their name you know talk about their work others you know and that's what Karama is doing you know we're highlighting female scholarship not because only because they're women but because it's quality scholarship and their voices should be heard and known and I would encourage you to do the same yes sir thank you my name is Akbar former World Bank official first thanks to all panelists there was a couple of comments on right to vote and democracy and woman and Muslim country as leaders I don't have a question just a comment that in Pakistan we had two time elector prime minister Pakistan also there are reserved seat for women in both houses in the Senate and National Assembly and there are more than 20% parliamentarians they come on reserve seat and in addition they are allowed to of course compete in the open contest I would strongly encourage other Islamic countries to follow Pakistan thank you thoughts on that too I mean we we actually have done a fair amount of coverage of women leaders around the world we were privileged to interview prime minister Budo at the UN conference in Beijing in 1995 and what a woman she was I was so sad when she was assassinated she would walk into a room and just light up the world and very impressive brilliant but but please talk about that I mean why for example as Pakistan had women prime minister and the US hasn't had a woman president yet and why don't Westerners take that more into account your thoughts well I mean why why Western women don't take that into account is a hard question to answer I think generally when you look internationally in terms of US representation compared to other countries where we tend to be at the thought and it's not just Pakistan I think there's at least five other Muslim countries that have had female leadership Bangladesh there is Indonesia I think more Turkey Sri Lanka Sri Lanka had a mother and a daughter in opposing host of us recently yeah so you I mean you have that trend and it's very interesting to see and I mean I think it's it's again a hard thing to say I just would go back to the idea that women's leadership doesn't always equal women's rights so just understanding that that distinction both equally important very important I think just for a young girl even if it's the worst woman in the world to see a female sitting there a young woman knows that one day that she can be her so that can be her so I think it's very important but it doesn't equal women's rights and so you know just understanding that those are two different goals any other thoughts all right next next question please yes right here so my name is Alexis Carson and as someone who isn't Muslim but is a huge supporter of gender equality and Muslim women's rights I'm wondering what the best way to be a secular ally and to support Muslim women as but as someone who probably wouldn't be teaching anything in Islam Lynn any ideas well I think you know even the the disposition that you articulated in knowing where you are and that it sounds like you are amenable to hearing what Muslim women are saying they need and what they may not need I think is an excellent place to start and not making assumptions but I defer to far greater experts well first of all thanks for saying what you did that's really awesome I think you know Bonnie just mentioned the Beijing conference that I was not at but the Karama founders it was actually right after Beijing that Karama was we were founded right at the same time as that conference and it was interesting because if I hear when I hear stories of women that were there it was this idea that it was collaborative it was all of these women who were supporting one another and I think the most important thing that came out of it though was that after the 60s movement in the U.S. where women of all you know different races and religions were working together for women's rights in the U.S. one of the narratives that was really disturbing at Beijing was that Muslim women need to be saved and you know they're the next frontier of oh we're now liberated let's liberate Muslim women and that's I think that was a problem and I think that the most important thing that allies can do in any you know feminist circle is to say what do you you tell me about your experience let me hear your voice and your story and give you that space you know because you may have a privilege you may have privilege because of your socioeconomic status or your race that others may not have and giving space and lifting up those voices is really important. Should she join Karama? Yeah come on we're we're happy to have you. Thoughts is there anything in your book about that? Well I would just okay I want to underscore everything that was already said the only thing that I would add is that I think just speaking as a as a person of faith I'm a Christian I'm a reverend actually in the in a Protestant tradition but one thing that I can say that's helpful is a religious woman who's working for women's rights is that for those who are coming from the secular field of women's rights to to allow religious women to speak about what religion says and teaches because I oftentimes hear a lot of secular women's rights activists saying well the religion teaches this or religion says this and and silencing religious voices and so again it just underscores what Aisha is saying in terms of giving the space for for for Muslim women and for religious women to be able to offer their perspectives and their experiences. Yes the woman on in the gray shirt yes here. Hi my name is Shereen I'm a PhD student so my question touches on something that both Aisha and Manel spoke to which is the idea of giving voice but also a fear of speaking out within a community and a religion that's already stigmatized and attacked and the fear of sort of airing the community's dirty laundry and I wonder about the practical implications of that particularly for the Muslim American community in terms of domestic violence sexual violence things of that nature where there is a fear of speaking out because no one wants to air the dirty laundry of a community that's already under attack and sort of how do we counter that especially I mean this is an experience that isn't necessarily specific to Muslims but rather just marginal communities in general. So I'll start I think that that's really important we do hear and Karama does a lot of domestic violence work and so of course silencing is one is a form of abuse so not giving people the space to talk about what's happening to them or making them feel like they shouldn't say what's happening to them is incredibly abusive and problematic so I understand coming from the Muslim American community a community that I'm very protective of and very proud of this you know impulse to say you know we don't need any more we don't need to be in any more stigma any more negativity but I also don't think and when I spoke to this earlier you don't you can't be in denial of what's happening in your community either and I think with sexual assault and DV it's not exclusive to any one community I mean I think that when you're talking about DV you have to talk about power and control and you have to talk about patriarchy and what is lending to that abuse which unfortunately is seen across cultures across faith communities and around the world and so I think that reframing the narrative so that the focus is not on oh you know does your faith condone it for example it's not about that it's actually about abuse and we should talk about abuse and we should talk about eliminating it in all of our communities because it manifests itself now there are different ways it manifests itself and that's because of culture and society but I think reframing and instead of being in a defensive posture being on the offense and talking about what the actual issue is is is very important and we are about out of time so the gentleman in the striped shirt will be our last question please my name I mean Mahmood I'm activist political activist but interested in religion of course as an Egyptian I remember my mother or all the mother is running everything in the household leading the community in general but the issue is education that's the number one education to man and woman and there is no embarrassing way to man you the man understand the verses of Quran is the verse of Quran never changed since prophet Muhammad there is no old Islam and new Islam is the same verses and the verses is clear equality is there you have to have these verses ready to talk about the also the most important thing Imam doesn't have any power we don't Imam doesn't mean anything to Islam in general it's only guidance if you want to ask but you can learn Islam on your own you interpret it on your own as long as you have the education the problem in the in the Middle East is supporting dictatorship in the area which having to go against women most of the time like Saudi Arabia Egypt and so and the United States play bad role on that they are not helping they are supporting people to oppress the society especially women and I have a lot of stories about Egypt but I will not go further your thoughts final thoughts final thoughts um well one final thought I'll just throw out there is that um I love theology done by women I love theology done by many men as well but I particularly have have come to really appreciate the ways in which the women experience the divine and bring that experience in their perspectives into the way they do theology and legal interpretation and so on and this is across traditions and I think when you bring this again bring the violent conflict lens back into it women have different experiences in violent conflict they have different experiences in life and so when they bring those perspectives to to the Quran the Sunnah to to Buddhist texts to Christian scriptures and so on they have different um different lenses and experiences that they bring to the particular interpretation and if we want to understand the fullness of God or divinity or truth seeing that perspective and interpretation helps expand the horizon of the divine and so I would just say again kudos to Kurama for the work that they're doing to lift up the female interpreters of the traditions and what the Quran and the Islamic tradition has to say about it and encourage all of you to to look at what they're doing and and look at what other religious women and organizations are doing across other traditions to do similar efforts but the fascinating dialogue going here I'm so sorry I didn't get to all the questions let's keep the discussion going it's really important you know network through usip and please join Kurama and we'll keep this we'll keep this talk going thank you all for coming today