 Thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon and welcome to USIP to the US Institute of Peace. My name is Manel Omar. I'm the acting vice president for the Middle East and Africa Center. I'm very happy to be here with you today and very happy to welcome this very esteemed panel on a topic that's very dear to my heart. Looking at religion and violent extremism and the very important role of gender in the mix as part of the solution. One of the things that I'm most proud about being at USIP is the fact that we actually have a very active center that does religion and peace building. And I say does religion and peace building because we try to move ourselves away from just the conversations of interfaith but actually what is the role in solving some of the problems. Likewise we have our gender and peace building center that really focuses at the role of gender as a potential solution for conflict resolution. Our recent partnership with the Carter Center and I was very lucky to attend the forum on women over the last two days and interact with these very important people who are on the ground in the field and a much wider group of activists over 60 people really putting our heads together recognizing that when we talk about women when we talk about using religion as a very important tool to change that we already have a concrete idea of what the recommendations are. One of the biggest challenges that we have been facing is a little bit of the missing piece of how do we take all these recommendations like UN Resolution 1325. A lot of the ideas that have kind of emerged about women and religious actors and that combination being a missing piece and effectiveness in our programming. So we've got the rhetoric which is I think an accomplishment we didn't have in the past but we haven't really merged that in terms of bringing it together in practice and in change on the ground. We just keep repeating the recommendations but over and over we're failing to initiate them particularly in the times of conflict. So I was very pleased to be working with everyone to be talking about how do we change that how do we move it forward. I think particularly when we look at religion today we know that religion is a powerful tool both negative and positive. And the temptation is to just keep that negative element of you know let's sideline religious leaders or use them as a tool to counter narratives versus really partnerships. And I think that the last few days at the forum on women we really kind of challenged ourselves to think about how we practice in a much deeper way. One of the other issues that we talked about at the forum that I thought was very powerful was in some ways when we're talking about the injustices and the traction of religious extremism. Taking a note that when we're talking about religious extremism we're not automatically just jumping to assumption that it's only the Islamic State. We're seeing religious extremism coming out in countries like Burma. We're seeing there's an initial religious extremism that I've been using within militias in Africa. But the reality is people have been able to take religious ideology and use it in a negative way. That there may be a temptation to forget about the positive ways and really working and dialoguing with religious leaders and integrating them in programs where we can have an effect. And we discussed different ways of doing that. Now rather than me sit and continue to talk about my walk aways I want to go ahead and welcome you again and transition over to this panel. I have had the great honor of working with Karen Ryan at the elders conference before and more recently at the forum. So I'd like to welcome you and I'm glad that you're here with us. She's the senior advisor for human rights at the Carter Center and she will introduce the panelists and continue with the panel. Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much Manal and to the US to US Institute of Peace for hosting us. It's really a wonderful opportunity and I see a very diverse audience including all age groups which makes me very happy because I think we have a lot of wisdom learning and also young people who are going to help us take this work forward. I'm going to just turn it over to Susan Hayward here from USIP. But before I do you might have seen as you were sitting down the forum on women website that we have developed. It's in development we have it unfolding in a few stages. The first stage will be a round table discussion where we will use virtual round tables to keep the conversation going. So if you if you like what you hear today keep coming back to the website there will be events and there'll be virtual round tables where we keep the conversations going from many countries. So we're really excited about that tool just to deliver a message from President Carter who was the chair of this forum. We've been doing this for many many years working with human rights defenders because our view and his view when he was in the White House was that people can actually transform their societies from within. And our job is to think about how we can help them and not impose from the outside. That was his philosophy as a president and it's the philosophy that he brought to the Carter Center whether it's eradicating disease or whether it's promoting democracy and human rights from within. So working with religious actors one thing that we decided is we want to start using the term religious actors because there might be leaders there might be people of faith there might be organizations. Various ways to engage religion in the solutions. The last point I'll make from from him from President Carter and from the group at large is if we could understand that so much of the funding and our political will goes towards military activities towards violence and we called this conference beyond violence. We understand that there whenever there is a very dire threat to us that we see in the Middle East and I'm not going to call it the Islamic State and the being will maybe elucidate on why we should stop using that phrase later. But there are threats and we have to face threats we can't ignore threats physical threats like this. But if we could devote some of our political will and our resources to the long term to the vision on the horizon of what it is we're trying to accomplish. We are relying on tactics now what we need is vision and one of the things that President Carter said is we're going to spend something like a trillion dollars to update the outdated nuclear arsenal over the next 10 years. A trillion dollars and that's a weapon system that we hope never to use. Pray God we never use it. Imagine what we could do with a trillion dollars if we were building communities and working with people who are in their communities building the future. So that's a question I'll leave it with as we hand it over to our panelists. Welcome everybody I'm Susan Hayward I'm the Interim Director of the Religion and Peace Building Center here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Karen didn't do some of the PR for their work and so I'm going to do it for her. The website that you can go to visit is forumonwomen.cardercenter.org. And no www because there's a redirect problem so just forum on women. And once you get there you can get their publication Mobilizing Faith for Women. And you can also read a little bit about President Carter's most recent book called Action Women Religion Violence and Power. Which is an intersection that as Manal mentioned we're also very interested in doing a lot of work on here at the Institute of Peace. Through the Religion and Peace Building Center through the Gender Center and some of our other centers here at the Institute. Really looking at what are what how do issues of gender of religion the drivers of violent conflict and extremism intersect. And how can we strategically as an outside organization in partnership with local communities try to operate with sensitivity to those dynamics. And also work cross sectorally cross communities in ways that can mobilize some of those same dynamics to address some of the underlying drivers of violence whether social psychological economic or political. And a lot of the folks you're about to hear from are operating in those strategic sensitive ways in their local context. And have come here to DC after this forum in Atlanta to share with folks here some of the insights of the discussions there some of the stories of how they're operating effectively on the ground. And some of the lessons for all of us here in DC as policymakers and coming from organizations seeking to support actors on the ground. How we can do that work most effectively recognizing that that sometimes there can be a little bit of baggage with American organizations or actors coming in and support these efforts. So how can how can we do that work strategically and safely for them. And in ways that are effective recognizing who who is already doing this work on the ground with whom we can partner who are often not seen who are often invisible. So each of them are going to offer a presentation and then afterwards we're going to open it up for for question and answer and larger discussion. So if you have questions along the way please jot them down because we want this to be a broad discussion and we're going to start you have the long bios right with you. Oh and also if you want to tweet we do have some hashtags. The forum on women forum on women is the hashtag that was used as part of the Carter Center forum last week and you can continue that discussion by hashtagging that beyond violence is another one. We're going to so I will give you the long bios of each of our presenters but you can turn to those if you want them. But let me just say shortly that our first speaker is Fatima coming from Basra in Iraq where she leads an organization that she founded in 2003 that has helped to support women's empowerment, women's rights and women's participation in activities that are addressing some of the root drivers of violence there. Including most recently some of the work to engage with militia in Iraq. Good afternoon. I am Fatima from the Fordos Society. I am from the south of Iraq. Approximately the age of my organization about 12 years I'm working in women issue. How we can empower women, how we can offer education programs, how we can educate women and enable her to participate in smaller projects. The last work that we did recently and after ISIL's invasion in Iraq. Violence started threatening us everywhere. For example in the southern provinces and especially after the fatwa of the Marjiyah, the reference, the resistance in Jihad. We have been surprised that after a week since the fatwa has been issued that many people will start carrying weapons everywhere. Many young people who are in the universities, they start leaving their universities and joining the armed groups. Many characters have been appeared and came to the service that were gathering those young men who carrying the names of Jihad. So I start looking around me that my neighbors, relatives, everyone start carrying weapons. I am a mother of three children, actually three boys, and I was worried that maybe it would be subject to carrying the weapons. So there should be a way that I start thinking how to prevent them from carrying weapons. So Jihad is not about violence, it's not about raising weapons. We have been created for the humanitarian purpose, a humanitarian message, which is work. So I have been here, there is a big headache waters as training centers that contain the biggest group of the young people who joined the militia. And you may do realize that there is a big difficulty to go there and visit these training centers. So I found out a way to get into these training centers. This is why I asked some people to donate some money so I was able to collect about $5,000 from people and I was able to buy some nutrition, some clothes and go to visit these training centers. So when I met those young people at the training center, I found that they are carrying just a misleading and wrong understanding about carrying weapons, Jihad and about life and death. So I do realize that I am not a scholar in my religion, but I am also well known about some verses in my religion that life is to live and to work and to make good things. Those 3,000 young people who were in the training centers, they were out of any contact with emails or anything. Only I was able only to get about 500 of those young men who were in the training centers about their phones, about their Facebook. So I started to open channels with them through the social channels like the Facebook phone and then I asked them to go and visit some hospitals, some schools in order to make some improvements in these places like cleaning or doing the glasses of the windows. Frankly speaking, this initiative is good and it is sustained till now, but we still need more support in order to make it more fruitful and productive in the future. For example, we need media coverage in order to publish this initiative and to make it teach everyone. For example, we like to make an interview with those young people by religious men so they can pursue them and convince them to put down the open and come back to their social life. There are many humanitarian initiatives but it needs always to be supported in order to sustain and develop. Actually, I feel so happy when I opened my Facebook page, I found many militia men who are like to join me, I'd like to talk to me, to continue friendship with me. This is the summary of my presentation and I'd like to take the time of others. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you Fatima, thank you very much. A couple things that I think are remarkable about her story one is that obviously there is already work that's being done at the front lines of some of the most extreme violence that we're seeing around the world. And it's money, it's work that's being done not because of outside incentives, not because of outside strategies that are being offered, expert advice and strategies are funding. But she managed to find the funding herself and to develop the strategies herself to do this work because she knew what the problems were and how to address it. But also that important recommendation about the need to create linkages and to help connect her with media outlets and others to really amplify those efforts. Our second speaker comes to us from Libya, Dr. Ella Muravitz, who is the leader of the organization called the Voice of Libyan Women. She grew up in Canada until the age of 15 and then moved to Libya where she helped found this organization to advance women's rights as well as the women's role in the reform taking place there, the transition and in peace work being done there. So you can read her long bio but Ella, I'll hand it off to you. You really don't have to read that whole bio. So first off, thank you all for coming and thank you for having me. It is an honor to be here and to not only share our experiences with you but hopefully learn from some of the lessons you guys have as well. I founded the organization called the Voice of Libyan Women after the work we did throughout the revolution. And the organization initially focused on utilizing international conventions and because let's be fair I founded the organization quite young. I was 21. I have no idea what a women's rights organization would do to reach the vision I wanted. So I went on to Google and they told me political and economic empowerment through international conventions and I was like done, I can do this. This is what we're focusing on now. Did not work the way I thought it would because I did not necessarily consider my local context. And very early on I would go to my community, my aunts and uncles even and I'd be like international conventions and they'd be like Habibdi which is a very nice way of saying like sweetheart. We don't follow local law for 42 years and you're asking me to follow international law? Like let's be a bit realistic. So I started initially through our own community through my organization in our own families and then in our city and then slowly spreading it out seeing what exactly would work. What belief system could I tap into that people could say I recognize your right for dignity and respect and you recognize mine. And very quickly it became apparent that people are heavily regulated by culture. And culture is heavily influenced and sometimes excused by misinterpreted, misused and manipulated religion. And for us it became apparent that the only way to address this was by saying wait, we're not going to step out of the religious arena because for decades that's what women in the region have done. A lot have chosen not to actively contest the misuse of religion. And for fair reasons they don't want their reputation to come under fire. It's a very difficult arena to get into. But what happens is the conversation will happen with or without us. And the conversation will determine what happens to our rights and our bodies and our dignity. And so we felt that it was imperative that we become part of that conversation. Our first project was international purple hijab day which happens February 13th of every year. And it is a day where men get to wear purple ties or scarfs around their neck and women can wear purple scarves or ties or even a purple pin or ribbon. And it's a day against domestic violence. There is no learning curve. We don't go and give seminars. It's genuinely just a day where people show awareness for action against domestic violence. And the reason we did something that only asked for you to put a color on was because we wanted to see how many people would initially buy in. Could this technique work? In the first year we had 17,000 Libyans. 17,000 including the Libyan Prime Minister on TV publicly state that domestic violence was against our belief system. The second year we had Queen Noor of Jordan among other international elite as well as now 35 cities in Libya do it through their public school system. We quickly realized that this was a way where we could address social issues where people felt comfortable. People felt that their belief system was being recognized and we could actually make significant change. Our Justice Minister that year spoke out for reparations for rape victims. We then went on to a national security assessment and that national security assessment became one of the foundations for our women's charter work and now will be fed into the Libyan Constitution. And during that national security assessment we asked women what is their definition of security. And a woman said to be honest I don't know what security is. I'll tell you what insecurity is. Insecurity is every single time my son leaves the house I feel like I am in the passenger seat of a car. And the car if you've ever driven in Libya we drive fast. We don't wear seat belts and everybody like I mean it's a life philosophy we have. Everyone is the best. So she said that it's like she's sitting in the passenger seat praying and holding on to the door and her son is driving. And her son is sure of where he's going. It's his foot on the pedal. He's the one who gets to leave the house with the weapons. He's sure he's coming home safe. I'm not that confident of the driver. But she sits in the passenger seat praying to God. She said that's how I feel every day waking up when my kids go to school. When my son leaves the house. When I hear bombs nearby. So we very quickly after that said okay so how can we address women's role in security? How can we do this? In a society where a lot of men can't even be involved in security if you don't have a gun. How can we ensure that women have a voice? And it's heard. We started something called the Nur campaign. And Nur in Arabic is basically a symbolic word for enlightenment. And the idea is that darkness doesn't is not a place of ignorance. Darkness is just the absence of light. So when people say well darkness it's so sad. People don't know. It's actually quite, it's a great opportunity. All you have to do is shed light on the issue. So the Nur campaign took Quranic verses and hadiths, which are sayings of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and put them on billboards initially. And in the radio, traditional media is very rarely talked about, but it's very significant in our society. So radio, billboards, television. For three months we did an only media campaign. Our organization did not show up. The name the voice of Libyan women was not heard. And we did it specifically to send the message that this was a community effort. That this was for community rights. This is not about women. Men are not perpetrators. This is simply about the betterment of community. Following that we went into schools, workplaces, mosques, with a 35 city local team structure. So I did not go into another community. Members of that community, business people, civil society, people from the girl guides. Young men, our teams were actually predominantly youth men in some cities. We're the ones who would go into schools and into workplaces. And they carried this message of equal rights. And so after this six month campaign, and when we were involved in schools and such, it became the largest campaign ever conducted in Libya by civil society or government. And we were able to actually get statistics in our surveys, which we then filtered to the government, the governments, I apologize. And over the course of that time, we realized that communities were much more open to hearing about their belief system and how their belief system actually established the international conventions, how the UN kind of copied us. Because we came up with free speech and human rights and dignity first, right? So it became a much easier way for us to work. And that's how we've carried on our work to ensure that women have places at the peace table. It's not a foolproof structure. It needs support. It needs buy-in. It needs partners, right? Because these conflicts aren't created only locally. These are not community conflicts. They're heavily influenced by regional politics and by international actors. And so they need all those different groups to reach solutions. But they are a start in understanding that the quickest way to change the community and the most sustainable, the most sustainable and practical is through the people who have access to that community and who have local respect in that community. They are the agents of change we need to be working on. And if we continue to solely bomb schools and bomb hospitals and create this feeling of persecution in the local community, we're only going to get more young men who want to pick up guns. And some young girls. So the idea is we really do need to start changing the way we're communicating with local communities and who we're communicating with. Thank you. Thank you very much, Alah. I studied theology and religion before I went to international relations school. And when I first went to IR school and learned about humanitarian law and human rights law, I sort of looked around the room at everybody else and I was like, does anybody realize that they're talking about Hugo Grosius and that they're talking about a lot of the laws and the ideas that have their roots within religious law and within religious philosophical language that has since become secularized, but understanding some of the roots of these ideas within religious teachings can go a long way in terms of making them feel more resonant and relevant to local communities. You want to read the long bio of the next speaker, Mubin Sheikh, because he's got an interesting one. He speaks very authoritatively having spent some time within al-Qaeda affiliated organizations, having been radicalized when he was younger and then through a series of experiences started to question his commitments and his understanding of Islam and now works quite a bit with actors on the ground and with the Canadian and other governments to support efforts to address counter-terrorism and counter-violent extremism. Thank you very much. My Twitter handle is at Caliphate Cop. Both Cs are uppercase. It really is a great, great honor to be at US Institute of Peace. I thank all of you for coming. I'm really honored and humbled to be in the company of people, women especially, who are doing really, really good work. People always tell me, you know, you're so brave, you know, you did this, you did that. And I think back to the Women Peacemakers Conference that we had at San Diego University and it was stories that are happening in villages that we don't hear about. We're so far removed from them and, you know, that's where the real, I think, work is being done. So I'm going to try to do some of that, explain some of what I do and hopefully piggyback off of them. So Susan mentioned a little bit about my background. Twenty years ago, I would have ended up in an Al-Qaeda cell. I probably would have either ended up killing myself, killing people. I went to Pakistan. I was 19. I was actually 18. I went to Pakistan. I had a chance encounter with the Taliban. And a young kid from the West, from Canada, identity crisis, sense of adventure, sense of belonging, wanting to realize the idealized and romanticized versions of Islamic history where we all lived happily ever after. And here I am and I come upon about ten individuals armed to the teeth, turbans, beards, robes, machine guns, rocket-propel grenades. And they said to me that I was with a group that was an apolitical group, apolitical missionary-type group. And the call was that if you want to bring about change in the world, you do so by following the commandments of God and as shown by the way of the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, peace be upon him. And they said, yeah, we're doing that. And the way to bring about change is with this and he held aloft his AK-47. And so for a kid like me at that time, I was just enamored by them. And when I returned back to Canada in 1995, the fall of 95, they came to power in Afghanistan. I took that as a validation of their worldview. And I became a supporter of the Taliban. And in 1996, the Chechen War began, the Ghrazni invasion in Chechnya, and I supported the Mujahideen in Chechnya. And then 1998, Osama bin Laden came out with his fatwa against the world. I became a supporter of Al-Qaeda. And I recruited other youth and we were always on the verge of doing something. And I thank Allah, I thank God that he withheld that he kept me back from that. And there were individuals that I grew up with who did go and never returned. And so I maintained that until the 9-11 attacks. I initially celebrated the attacks earlier in the day. And as the day went on, the tragedy of that day, not just on the people in the buildings themselves, but what came from that, the complete seismic shift that the world underwent after those attacks. And I started to reconsider my commitment to the cause. I then went to Syria. I realized I need to study my religion properly. So I traveled to Syria. I moved there for two years to study Arabic and Islamic studies. And by the grace of God, I found myself in the company of a very, very lovely sheikh who taught me the correct interpretations of the religion. And I left my extremist interpretations. And I always say that religion is like a hammer. You can either build a home with it or you can destroy a home with it. It depends on your perspective. So I returned back to Canada in 2004. Actually, I should say while I was there in 2003, the mics placed bombing that happened in Tel Aviv. I knew those two individuals. I had chatted with them in the halls of the Faculty of Literature, University of Damascus while we were there studying English, studying Arabic. And so a lot of pressure from the government came and so I ended up leaving. Came back to Canada in 2004, became an undercover counterterrorism operative. People always ask, wait, how does that happen? When I was growing up and by day I went to public school. By evening I was going to Quran school. So open multicultural society versus closed, rigid, fundamentalist society. One of the kids from my Quran school was on the front page of the paper. He had been arrested on terrorism charges in connection with the London fertilizer bomb plot. I contacted the intelligence agency. Yes, I picked up the phone and I called them. And who does that? A kid who's just gone through two years of Syria, disillusionment, and you found appreciation for rights in the West. And became an undercover counterterrorism operative. I conducted infiltration operations into terrorist groups, individuals. And it's a long story, which I actually document in a book. Shameless self-promotion. This is my book. It's not really to, I mean, sell the book. It's to explain what everyone keeps asking. How does somebody go from point A to point B? How does a white kid from suburbia end up in Syria? How does a 15-year-old girl end up in Iraq and or Syria because she wants to marry her jihadi prince that she's been idolizing online? Probably because she's living a very closed family home. She can't leave. You know, talk to members of the opposite sex. She wanted to tell teenage kids to do the naval gaze in this day and age. That's not going to work. It's not going to help. So there is this, it really does tie into a lot of the environment in which women and girls are growing up, boys are growing up. Is it any wonder that these boys have such a dysfunctional relationship with women that when they talk about sex, it's about sex with virgins in paradise after you kill yourself? It's like sexual nihilism. And so this is all linked. This is all linked to frameworks in which individuals are growing up. And so, I mean, the operational side apart, I began interacting with ISIS extremists online for two years, especially since the Syrian war began. You know, one of our colleagues was talking about, or sorry, the comment was made about when ISIS and these guys talk about we're breaking the women out of the prisons in Syria. And I followed three years of UN reports on the sexual assault of children and women and girls in Assad regime prisons. Three years of hard copy reports that were done, but nothing was done about them. So these narratives, they all tie in. These are grievances that people are able to latch on to. Even groups like ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, they can see this. You know, when there was the first British suicide bomber in Syria, they put a metal armor onto a truck and they made it into a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, a truck bomb. And he attacked the Aleppo prison. And he was praised for it across the board. There was huge mainstream support for what he did, mainstream support, because it was a military target. It was a prison target. It was a civilian target. It was just him. He was going to do the right thing. So in my engagement with extremist individuals, whether they're Al-Qaeda associated, Al-Shabaab, there are some individuals that I've been able to pull away and through private conversations, through the deployment, military term, through the deployment of counter-narratives. So basically, I'm just going to wrap up because, again, I don't also want to take time from our colleagues. The takeaway, the takeaway is that it is not about an either-or position. It's not that you have to rah-rah-rah for war, or you got to be Al-Kumbaya and no war. There is a middle road, the Prophet peace be upon him. He said, we are of the middle road. We take the middle road. It's a measured intellectual response to say very simply. And I'm coming from the counter-terrorism perspective. I just came back from a course with NATO counter-terrorism operational planning. I'm going back again in a week. It's such a big problem. It's in Turkey. And everyone will tell you, you cannot kill your way out of this problem. You cannot do it. No, you talk to the most decorated social forces people, and all of them will all tell you, you cannot kill yourself out of this problem. How many airstrikes have been launched against ISIS? Wow, look at all these airstrikes. Here are the videos. Doesn't that look cool? Things are being blown up. Great. ISIS is still expanding. Clearly, we're doing something wrong. So when people press you to say, well, what do you do? Do you want to just leave ISIS to do what they want? I said, no, you don't. You do want to defeat and destroy ISIS if that's the catchphrase that you're using these days. Yeah, you want to do all that. So actually do that. When you're doing this, it's actually causing them to increase. So clearly that's not working. That is not a tactic you want to be endorsing and furthering. So that's the takeaway, number one, that take them balanced position. That it's not about this and that. It's about figuring out what is your end game? What is your long-term vision? What is this country or the other country and there's rubble and smoldering ruins left? Then what? You're just going to get up and walk away. Look what happened in Libya. It will just reset the cycle. You establish a grievance. People will latch onto that grievance. They bring in ideology into that. You have a whole new generation of radicalized individuals. You cannot kill them all. You can't. As much as some people would like to think, you just cannot do that. So just my final point is that I strongly, strongly encourage you that if there is going to be an organization for military force that you do, and Sanam will talk about this, that you do promote the inclusion of women's security and the awareness that this is what happens at the end of the day. You can drop the bomb from thousands of feet above, but it's the mothers, the daughters, the fathers, the brothers, they're the ones who have to deal with what's left on the ground. Thank you. Thank you, Mavine. That's very powerful. And one of the things that I hope we talk about a little bit more in the question and answer is what are some of the root drivers of the violent conflict and extremism that can't be transformed or engaged or reached by bombs, but needs to be engaged through other means, and how can we support some of those efforts? So our last speaker today is Sanaam Anderlini, who's well-known in this town, in the field of women's rights and women's peace building. She leads the International Civil Society Action Network, ICANN, that has done a lot of work to support, to draw attention to the work that women are already doing on peace building on the ground around the world and also to try to draw more women into positions of decision-making and policy-making when it comes to these issues. So Sanaam. Thank you. It's great to be here. So at ICANN, we have a network of women activists, women's organizations in 13 countries across Middle East, North Africa and Asia, and we're actually extending on to Nigeria and the Caucasus basically anywhere where we're seeing the issues of extremism and militarism rising and where we know that women are really at the front lines of this work. And there is a reason why we do this, and there's a reason why in the 20 years that you were going radical in your direction, I was going radical in my direction, it's because of what I've seen and what we know consistently. So on the one hand, we have the knowledge that women have on the ground, what Fatima talked about, what Allah talked about, what our colleagues from Nigeria have talked about, and I hope they get a chance also to speak. They're seeing it, they're living with it, they're having to react to it because when you get bombs or you get crisis, you don't have a choice. You have to stand up and look after your family and take action, and that's just a reality. So we've been seeing this in a number of places, and one of the things that we do is we now produce these briefs called the Women's Say It's Gendered, Political, and Security Briefs, and I particularly raised this one to you, this is from Iraq, we published it in winter of 2013, and on the front page, we quote Al-Baghdadi saying, we're coming back to get you. So this is from women on the ground who were telling us, we're seeing the extremists coming. I can give you Libya, same story, we've just published Turkey, it tells you what's going on on the ground from the standpoint of women's experiences, and it is early warning, and so we need to take that seriously. The other reason for me is this issue of women leading by example. If we're looking for leaders to deal with these problems, these people are on the ground, they're not sitting in Washington, in fact, it's kind of depressing to talk to people here, because they have so much power, but they're like, well, we can't really, because then it looks as if we're being weak. Guys, seriously, can we just have some courage behind our convictions and do the right thing for once? And then the other aspect of this, which in this town is really misunderstood and trivialized, is that women in these contexts have power and influence. There is a reason why Allah and many other Libyans and Fatima and many of other women on the ground are being targeted and threatened with death for what they're doing and what they're saying. It's because they have influence, because they can change the way things are going. So instead of us here recognizing that, we trivialize it and say, oh, the women are doing women's issues. Let's give them micro credit and let's do women's empowerment. These people are more empowered than any of us will ever be and more courageous than certainly I am and probably most of this room is. And the other side understands this, so either they're trying to kill them or what they're doing in Tunisia right now, I was talking to a colleague in public brothel, you know, Hamams and places where women frequent, they are being recruited into that ideology because women have influence. So we have to recognize that women, this power and recognize it as power and put them at the table in terms of power play. The other aspect of this is that we have an exit strategy. When things go bad, the international community can pack up its bags out of Libya or Iraq or wherever. Allah can't do that. Fatima can't do that. So the issue of supporting and enabling the building of institutions on the ground is critical because they are left to deal with the messes that we have often created and made worse for them on the ground. I've worked on the Resolution 1325 I was involved in getting it mobilizing and drafting it and the essence of that resolution is precisely this, that if you listen to women, they will tell you in their context how to do things. They will tell you that you can't just parachute in and talk about this framework. It's how do you put it at that level. It's really about putting them at the table for them to navigate the spaces and the strategies of how to do this work. But we're also seeing that their stories are being erased and if we have time I'll give you a little quiz on that just to prove my point. But we're erasing them, we're ignoring them and we're marginalizing them. It's a fact of all this frankly and I'm afraid I'm sorry for using an analogy that for some people may be a little bit odd but Dr. Zeus, how many of you are familiar with Dr. Zeus and Cat in the Hat? The US has taken a Cat in the Hat approach to foreign and security policy. We go in to supposedly clean up one mess and we keep creating a bigger and bigger and bigger mess and then getting out and then the Cat in the Hat coming back. We're back in Congress thinking about the bill for war. It's absurd and it's dangerous and yet that's the approach that we're taking. The fact that we are looking at countries like Libya, Iraq, Nigeria where they have enormous wealth right, they have... Nigeria should be a middle income country it's got so much wealth and yet we have supported and enabled the corruption that's gone on, we're supporting and enabling militaries that are corrupt and leaders that are corrupt and keep bringing those same guys and supporting them as opposed to the voices on the ground. So we have a real problem in terms of how this town and our international community is dealing with these issues. The other side of the problem is that we have seeded the human rights agenda and by human rights I mean dignity, I mean shelter education, health basically. These things for 30 years we have given up those issues and pursued our own agenda of economic growth and so forth and guess how we build that void. It's these types of groups. I've interviewed gang members in Jamaica and they will tell you the same thing as what you'll hear from these folks. People want basic dignity and if you don't give it to them somebody else will go and provide that and the problem is that those other groups are often extreme in their ideology or militaristic in what they're doing and we're seeing in the Muslim majority context especially what we've seen is the Wahhabi version of Islam which is really Pakistan that I grew up with and was not the norm in Egypt and many of these places has basically been spread by the Saudis and it's now becoming normalized. We produced a brief called extremism in the mainstream. Before you even get to violence you're getting extremist ideology which is saying it's okay to treat other people that are not of the faith badly and Pakistan this is becoming normalized and it's very, very dangerous. So we've seeded that space as well. So where are we? I think, and I really mean this seriously, this cannot go on. Mubin was telling us earlier today, 9-11 Al-Qaeda had 5,000 members. Now how many people are in these Boko Haram and ISIS and Al-Shabaab and they're all the same. They all have the same ideology and the same motivations and the same kind of system in place. It's getting out of hand and we need to do something serious about it. Now in terms of the work going on here, the recognition of the local voices as I said, the people who are leading by example needs to be elevated to the maximum level in our communities wherever you're working on these things please bring that up and bring those voices out. The Women Peace and Security Act is a piece of legislation that's now sitting in Congress which actually addresses this. It talks about the participation of women having a gendered lens on foreign policy and security issues which could have a major impact if it gets passed. So if you have congressmen please get them to support it and if we're taxpayers in this city, we're responsible. We're actually responsible for what our Senate and our Congress is doing today. So we really need to speak out because it's on our watch that this is happening. It's with our tax dollars that this is happening and I'll end with a second Dr. Zeus example because I think he's one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century if you read his books is Green Eggs and Ham. Green Eggs and Ham is a story of a guy who keeps going up and saying will you try Green Eggs and Ham and it's like no, no, no, I'm not going to do it here and finally he tries it and it's like hey look this works and this is the message that we have. How much longer do we have to keep saying listen to the local voices bring women to the table bring Afghan women, bring Libyan women bring the civil society. How much longer do we have to keep saying this it's done. It's become so critical and it's just time for that to happen. So bear that in mind and let's have the conversation. Thank you very much. Thank you Snob and not the speakers. We're going to open it up for question and answer. We have two microphones on each side so you can begin to line up. Or are we going to line up? Nope, we're going to walk around. So you can lift your hand and let our microphone handlers know if you're interested. I'm going to start with the first question. I'm going to ask two questions. Can you identify for us what do you see as one of the one or two prime drivers underlying root causes of violent conflict and violent extremism in your context. And two, what is one of the main recommendations that you would offer to those of us here in DC about how to support your efforts most effectively on the ground? I've been given permission by Allah to speak. He's learning. We asked Jimmy Carter, president Jimmy Carter this, somebody at the table said, Sir, how do you do it? How do you have such like ability to keep going and truly after he thanked Karen for the work she did? He says, I don't argue with my wife. It's like long life. Everybody asks us about drivers. I'm doing my PhD in psychology, studying radicalization and violent extremism. And radicalization is a very individualized process. You really can't say it's one thing or the other. Very generally speaking, grievances and ideology are the two key ingredients. It could be adventure, sense of belonging, sense of identity. It could be some of those things, all of those things, whether in different intensity. It really depends on what background a person is coming from. Some secular guy who's got nothing to do with ideology and errant drone strike and his family is dead. The next day, he's going to want to find where the Western armies are. He's going to want to attack them. There's no ideology involved. You might have a person who grows up marginally Muslim, doesn't really know who he is. They're talking about religion. They make him feel low self-esteem. How come you don't know enough about your religion? He feels the need to belong. He becomes radicalized. He goes through a period. Just a side note, radicalization is a process by which a person becomes extremist. And an extremist is someone who accepts the use of violence to achieve their goals, political goals especially. Violence, that's a violent extremist. It's synonymous with terrorists. There are very many, different ways in which this can happen. It can be ideology and where it is. For example, if you grow up in a home and you're learning about religion, religion is the framework through which you view the world. Your actions will thusly be informed. Even your sense of identity. Who am I? What am I supposed to be? What am I entitled to? You might take from your ideology. So sometimes ideology is a driver. I know some people are shy to say this or reluctant to say this, but that's the reality. So that's a little bit about the drivers. How to support. It depends on where the person fits on that spectrum. I deal mostly with ideology based extremism. So really I would say, number one, do not support the narrative that this is a war against Islam. I didn't say this in my comments about ISIS. Don't use IS. Please do not use IS. Do not call them Islamic State. Whether you want to believe it or not, doesn't matter, but as soon as the headlines read, United States bombs the Islamic State, they pick it up and they say, see, it's a war on Islam. They're bombing Islam. Even Daesh, I'm going to give the same word I gave in the previous thing. Please write this down. I'm going to say R-I-J. Khawarij. K-H-A-W-A-R-I-J. Khawarij. Takfiri is another term that was used in Takfiri is like it's an adjective. It means somebody who does Takfir basically declares you an apostate. You're not Muslim enough and on the basis of that they kill people. That's the adjective, but the noun is Khawarij. Khawarij are a deviant sect that the Islamic sources talk about this, be upon him. He condemned them, he castigated them, he denigrated them, and I probably guarantee you if the West starts using the term Khawarij, some extremist somewhere is going to hear that, his head's going to explode. That's one less extremist to deal with, right? According to Iraq, this Kistermism came to Iraq for the following reasons. After the fall of the regime, we found that there are nuclear weapons in the state, and this was formed on the basis of power. After the old regime toppled, and the collapse of the government institution, we found a kind of gathering according to the party belonging. Even the formation of the Iraqi government has been constituted according to the sectarian affiliation. As it was a game of winning, who's going to win in this government, Shia or Sunni? The neighboring countries, it has a big influence upon this topic. Some of the neighboring countries were supporting the Sunni side, and others supporting the Shia side. All these reasons, and because the young people, they were living in a kind of emptiness, they have no specific affiliation to anyone, and another reason is they make them join either a group, the Shia or Sunni. For example, they finished their education, and no job or work. Or they are witnessing the collapse of the government institution, and they can't do anything. So they are looking for specific personality or direction in order to have specific affiliation towards them. For example, if I publish my picture of my Facebook page, it means that I am a hero, and I can carry weapons, and I kill some people, so people will start to join me. So just act like these stories and issues start to influence young people and bring them to a specific stream. We can, like religion, we can also use another system that make those young people follow us. For example, after ISIS invading to Mosul, they start killing the Christians as they proclaiming that we are going to a Islamic state. So of course, it has a big influence on the society. It means that it is true. Islam, who deserve to be the existence of religion. So I publish something on my, something like a message from the Quran said, if God wants, he can tell you one nation. Another version from the Quran says that God creates you from different tribes, different colors, different species in order to get known, get exposed, and to develop your life. There is another verse saying there is no difference between who is Arabic or who is foreign unless his faith to God. So it means there is no difference. So I found many comments supporting my opinion. We do need to get knowledge and socialize with others in order to know the culture of each one. I said to use the ideology. We have to use the same thing, also ideology. This is the optimal solution. Thank you. So I agree with both Muneeb and Fatima about kind of the radicalization of individuals and how it comes about. I think that the question of how we radicalize individuals isn't the one we should be asking. I think is how we create societies where these groups continue to flourish and continue to attract people as a viable alternative. And I think it does come down to a lack of economic and political actualization for these individuals which then plays on their personal need, be it for retribution or for a sense of belonging or a sense of fulfillment. But there is something in the society which allows these people to believe that this is the only way they will succeed. This is the only way they will provide for their families. This is their only option. This is the only way they will succeed. This is the only way they will be mentally wrong with our societies. That our societies are corrupt politically and they are corrupt economically because those same individuals should have just as much opportunity and access to farm as they do to join a militia. I think that ideology plays a significant part in the sense that it is manipulated. And I think a good example of that is sociological manipulation and conversation as is women not driving in Saudi Arabia. The only difference is it is not allowed to really influence as much individual uprising here because there are political and economic constraints because people have something they will lose. So we have to create a society where people feel like they have something to lose by going an alternative and more violent route. Going back to what the U.S. can do I think is the most set and honest example. And I say that because we will have American delegations or western delegations come into Libya and say where are the female peacemakers and there will be five men in suits. So let's set an honest example. Let's say we are against corruption then we are against all corruption. We support women in government or we support women economically then economically. Let's not give $20,000 to a male who wants a grant and $1.3,000 to the women and tell her well you didn't really make much of that opportunity. That's not fair and it's not realistic and that's something that granting agencies here can actually be very beneficial in microfinancing women for economic opportunity is not working for a reason. In most of our countries it doesn't work because it's not enough. They don't get the technical information. A second thing is for those who do work in agencies which then go for example USAID or State Department or other think tanks and organizations that are going to Libya or Iraq. There has to be a greater understanding of the local context. I mean it is a personal responsibility. If you are a doctor you need to understand how to deal with the disease you're treating. You have to take it on as a personal responsibility that you are going to listen to the individuals that you are going to ask them what is wrong with the genuine belief and intent that you are going to help them in the way that they need not in the way that you think is right. Because it tends to be that we go at different paces, right? Like in Libya something will not happen next week. It will take us 5 or 10 years to do something but I'm sure that if we do it our way we can get there. But if somebody parachutes in and says this is what you have to do every single door will close for this generation and probably the next. So genuinely listen to the local actors who know the society who know how they can maneuver and who know the risks because what happens and somebody at the conference called it SUV culture which I loved. There is this SUV culture of we come in and our security matters and our opinions matter and we are here to save you and to help you and then the local civil society actors who everyone knows their name and they know their families are at extreme risk because they are doing things which may not necessarily be in line with what is culturally but what is possibly possible and appropriate, right? At that time and that time frame. So I think we just have to be realistic of local actors and of kind of the timeline that they set. Thank you and it's important to remember that even as we talk about one or two drivers of violent extremism it's complex and there are multiple drivers of conflict, multiple drivers of extremism, political, economic, psychological, ideological and that similarly our solutions and strategies have to take into account all these multiple drivers and to engage them as much as possible strategically and in mutually reinforcing ways. So I want to open it up for question and answer if you could just give your name and your organizational affiliation and keep it brief so that we can get to as many people as possible. Microphone handlers, I know. The woman back there was Fest. Sorry, can we just give a quick shout out to our... You can talk to the doctor. Hi. I'm Leslie Kalsgrove. Today I'm with Women, Kind, International and my own firm. I have a million questions for every single one of you. But the one I'm fascinated with the most, Fatima is how do you how did you get young men to want to hear what you had to say when the men, the leadership of men was telling them something totally different? How did you break that barrier? There were many peace initiative has been conducted by me alone. For example, we have a big crisis about the power supply in Basra. The weather was very hot and it was summer and the temperature degree exceeded or reached 50 degrees and it was Ramadan. It means the fasting in Islam. So the power of it was continue more than 20 hours daily. So I wrote on a paper a big sentence saying that the electricity needs to be improved in Basra and I was and I took it, understand before Provincial Council in Basra. So some people were looking at me, they thought I'm crazy because I'm doing that alone. On the very next day I found about 10 persons raising the same banner standing with me before the Provincial Council. At the third day they turned to be 50 guys. Within 10 days we are turned about 1,050 persons. Then I have been surprised that most of the satellite channels making covering for this incident. So I asked why you are keep gathering around me so they told me because what you are doing is for the society. So this is one of the initiative piece, initiative that we are conducted alone and then we found interaction by the society and the gathering around us. So for the militia men they were so happy when we go to the hospital and clean it up from the dirt around it so they felt that they do something good for the society. So another example we conducted a field visit to a primary school and it was there were many students there and the windows were out of the glasses and they were freezing there so I thought those militia men around me did not imagine they are going to be improved or any kind of revenge will be conducted at this school because there is no al-Maliki son here so no one will take care of them. So many of the militia men who already I am in contact with them we have small bags for donation some people donate with one dollar and we were able to gather about two thousand dollars and take the windows. Everyone who participated in this action was really happy when we fixed the windows when we fixed the fans some al-Qitriq issue in the school they were so happy and they put these pictures on their Facebook pages. Actually we have many examples multiple examples when we do such humanitarian actions and we used to talk when we talk to them we use the prophet's speech god's speech so she refers that she used the same style through religion but in the most productive and for the good betterment for the society. So there are well known verses from Quran it's called that we have to cooperate for the good and everyone betterment at not and not on the opposite way which is aggressive way and bad way. So they found it is not my saying or it is not my desire but this is what God says. I'm sorry for taking a long time but believe me after the collapse many issues such as the demolish of a church or most belong to Sydney or sea it leads to a lot of killing and violence between people. So I used to make a field visit to the school and frankly to be telling them when the church demolish or demolish it could be rebuilt it's easy but when the human killed who can return him back to life? So the mosque or the church are not the most the most of the church is the most of the church is the most of the church is the most of the church most or the church are not sacred the holyness and sacred is only for God and this scary issue insulted by killing the human so the human has the dignity and we have to keep it and to preserve it for him. And I finish my speech with the verse from Quran God says who revived or who preserved a human life as he preserved the entire human life and God didn't specify which soul that you have to save or preserve it is just a human life it's not a Christian or Muslim thank you I'm sorry why don't we do a game of ping-pong and get a few questions a couple from each side and then we can invite our speakers to respond to the questions on group on mess and I should also let you know that our visitors have to leave immediately at three o'clock and so unfortunately we're going to have to stop immediately at three and then give them space so they can run out here and get over to the other side and so unfortunately we don't have enough space so they can run out here and get over to the other side of the mall for some meetings so can we get a question from over here and then we'll listen Hi my name is Celia Nielsen I'm originally from Turkey and I've lived in the United States for 27 years two years ago I went to Southeast Turkey to teach at a university when the situation broke with Syria and hundreds and thousands of refugees were coming over the border and I made a lot of friends and went to visit the refugee camps and talked to a lot of people and there was just two things that I've noticed it was that what was happening was there was this free Syrian army that was formed against Assad it was somewhat united it wasn't divided up into IS and all those different units right now and what I noticed when I talked to people people had this sense of belonging brought them together against this cause and Allah and Mubin also talked about this and I felt that it was very strong this sense of belonging need for sense of belonging it's almost like if you lose a child and you go to a grief group where there are other people like you you just have this solid connection that you wouldn't make with anyone else and so I noticed that was one of the driving forces of people getting together and doing things and another was that I noticed was the media, the images and the pictures and the things that they have shown me you can't help but be enraged and feel that anger and identify so what I'm going to ask I guess it's for everybody but especially for Mubin is that you felt that sense of belonging and then wanted to be together and then you left so was it another sense of belonging did you feel like you wanted to belong to another group that was really big and powerful that wanted you to leave the first one I think it's one of the things that begs the question of would it help to create this, to create a group with a sense of belonging that we can give to people oh sorry I'm sorry I have a question to sheikh sheikh journalist from Egypt and first I have like two questions first I wanted to know about your background are you like when you were involved in extremism or whatever you call it you were graduate of religious school madrasa Islamic school or what was your background I noticed that most of leaders like for example he's a graduate of medical school bin Laden was a businessman and most of them they are not grew up in religious schools to know the religion second I have a comment about the word khawaraj for me it doesn't make sense without explaining what it means khawaraj it means the people who went out this is a meaning in Arabic and these people were supporting Ali ibn Abi Talib and then they rejected him and later on they but does it make sense to like when you call ISIS or Daesh or Islamic state when you call them khawaraj like what is a comparison here and in my opinion for example ISIS when they set fire on El-Kasaspa they based their action on fatwa and the fatwa has they said that Abu Bakr he said fire on somebody and there are also fatwa from Ibn Taimeya who is most of Muslims refers to said about this fatwa about setting fire on somebody who was invading but I didn't find any religious institution refuting the fatwa or and this fatwa or Ibn Taimeya is a great scholar and it's Wahhabi school in Saudi Arabia who are great supporters of him so instead of refuting the fatwa you say khawaraj without explaining it is there one more question brief question we can take is about and I work at and I do refugee resettlement work here in the states and something that I notice is that we have a lot of dynamic leaders that are coming into this country without an opportunity to sit at a table to have their voices heard and they're straddling both cultures and both worlds and I'm curious how I can be that bridge and gatekeeper to invite them to a table to be leaders on behalf of their communities and potentially want to go back home to be a leader to prevent refugees from having to come here again I'll try to keep it brief sense of belonging sense of purpose really that's what it comes down to I think what happened to me was I had a sense of purpose I didn't know how I was supposed to manifest that and what should I do with that so the answer is that we need to create narratives for young people young girls so that they can apply themselves in something positive and this is what Faltima has done very successfully and I think society building things people get that, they see that they see the roads are cleaner, they see the windows are up the roofs are over the things so that's whatever and just a little bit of a joke snark comment, you talked about that I wanted to join a bigger group and I did join the bigger gang, the government what was your background it wasn't, I grew up in a stereotypical madrasa system where wooden bench Indo-Pakistani Maulana who didn't even pronounce the Arabic properly, we learned how to recite the Arabic, we didn't learn the meaning of the Arabic, didn't know anything what I was saying I could recite it very nice my makhraj is perfect but I didn't know what I was saying so like you said most of these people they don't really come from a religious background Anwar Awlaki, everyone talks about him what was his PhD in human resource management and to your point about Khawarij basically I wrote what's the point of using it because they really don't like it when we use it I'm thinking of this in the counter messaging side what can you use that makes the Muslims feel good about you using it and makes the adversary feel bad about you using it so that's really the reason why I use it and you're right, I can go into explanations the history of it is a long history of it if you go to my twitter thing on my pics section my pictures, I have screen grabs of statements from the hadith of the prophet of other religious scholars who talk about who the Khawarij are and how bad they are basically and that's why I do that when you point them to it when you see the prophet saying they are the dogs of hell they are the worst creatures blessedness is for those who are killed by them and who kill them so that's why I use it and about the burning fatwa you're right, Ibn Taimiya gave out a fatwa this was in the time of the Mongol invasion of Baghdad when they burned books killed everyone so I think in that context he came up with this fatwa but Ibn Taimiya was someone of a black sheep the rest of the scholars in his age actually imprisoned him because of some of his views so I really, I don't take from his fatwas that much but of course like you said, Wahhabi types they do take from his fatwas largely because they're very aggressive and violent and attack the other person ignoring that it came in the time of the Mongol invasion so I wouldn't like to go on more about the Khawarij but you can always look it up of course but see the pics section it will give you the scriptural references of the Khawarij things Ibn Sheikh Abdallah bin Mayer here for a speech a few months ago and he actually spoke specifically about the fatwas of Ibn Taimiya and he said that there is a misunderstanding in the translation of one of these fatwas and that if you actually go back and look at the original text of the fatwa it's been misinterpreted and misunderstood throughout history and so he issued a fatwa and a clarification of one of these fatwas to support violence Ibn Taimiya has a fatwa against the Khawarij you can see it on my pics section use it just a voice of caution in a sense I come from a context where for us the religious framework has been problematic and one of the things that we've seen is that and I've heard very senior people say this is that when you put all your morality and ethics into the rubric of a religion you practice, you know, you don't lie you don't cheat, you don't whatever because you're a Christian, because you're a Muslim if you give up that religious if you stop believing for whatever reason all those values also go away as well and that's something that we see in some of these places that there is a separation of the core values and I think that for many of us the issue of looking at the totality of whether it's the universal declaration of human rights which is very universal and is very much rooted in all of our cultures and histories and traditions and so forth or whether it's other frameworks for ethics and morals and so forth I think we shouldn't be doing an or it's not religion or it really is both and frankly we have a saying and we have a piece of poetry in Persian where Moses comes and tells a farmer, you know, why are you behaving like that why are you talking about God as if he's a human being and God tells Moses we don't care about the external behavior we care about internally how this person is and we care about the outcomes so it doesn't matter what the input is if somebody says they're a good Christian and they're out there killing people I'm not sure how good they are so it's really about the impact and the outcomes in terms of the behavior and we need to recognize that other factors come into play in terms of how we practice being decent to the rest of the world in our work we're trying to look back at not only the religious factors but cultural figures, historic figures folkloric figures that re-emphasize the idea of for example women's leadership and wisdom so that we can say this is part of my own history and culture and we have plenty of that in most of our context on the refugee question I really relate to that I was, you know, I saw Iranians who came doctors, engineers and so forth and they were as a refugee your entire identity is thrown out and it's absurd and even in this country specifically you have the best of everybody here, right who could be advising the government and we have that notion of what you want for America and what you want for your own country for your country of birth and yet there's a tendency to exclude those voices and it's absurd I look at the Iran sanctions issue right now the vast majority of Iranian Americans are like this is absurd and yet there's a tiny minority by a particular subgroup of neoconservatives that have the voice of Congress and they're influencing and it's bad for Iran and it's bad for the U.S. and frankly it's bad for the world so I think we really need to revisit that kind of why I do my work here anyway thank you just really quickly a follow-up to how you ensure that they're at the table I think first and foremost you have to inspire them a desire to be at the table still because a lot of them feel like they have people who have PhDs and medical doctors and they can't work in this country they can't provide for their family and so it becomes a very big issue of self dignity and respect so I think that really understanding immigrants are coming at times from fine situations at times from very difficult situations but creating a place in which they are not Libyan or Canadian or Iranian or British where they are both and and they can be both and comfortably thank you I'm going to ask Karen Ryan if she has anything final word that she wants to say as we're ending the session hi Ella and Paul good to see you all friends from our Carter Center world so just the last thought I wanted to say is that we're going to keep this conversation going next week there's a summit at the White House and as we're thinking about what's happening in this town this week discussion about the authorization of the use of military force we're going to be putting out some thoughts based on what you've heard I urge you to keep an eye out for that and also come back to our website the forum on women, religion, violence and power to stay in touch and to see our publications et cetera I really hope to grow this engagement but I just really want to thank you all for coming out yeah in one final point I want to make reiterating something that Menachat said at the beginning which is that we spoke a lot today about Islam a lot of our participants were coming from Muslim majority context but this issue of religion and religious ideas religious extremism or violent extremism that's being framed in religious terms this isn't just a situation that's happening in Muslim majority countries and with Islam I work a lot in Asia Sri Lanka and Burma we're seeing the rise of extremism within Buddhist frames there we see Christian extremism especially on the rise in certain countries in Africa in the US and elsewhere and there seems to be this way in which they're fueling each other and so just as we're talking about the need for there to be religious counter messages or religious actors involved in addressing some of the underlying drivers of conflict within Islam these same issues are relevant across different traditions and if we're only focusing on Islam that also I think around the world that this issue is about Islam or this is the West against Islam so I just want to add that cautionary piece at the end especially coming from the religion and peace building program where we try to work across religious traditions and acknowledge the drivers across religious traditions. Sorry we didn't get a chance to get to all of your questions as I said they got to run off to another meeting but we thank you so much for coming out here I know it's a schlep to get down to the US Institute of Peace but we love having you here so thank you very much