>>ETHAN: Hi everybody, welcome. My name is Ethan Zuckerman. This is part of our ongoing series of Media Lab Talks. So the first thing that I
want to let you know in case you didn't figure it out in this room filled with cameras, we are not only having a conversation with the people live
here at the MIT Media Lab, we're also having a conversation on Facebook live streamed out off of the Media Lab servers. If you are in this room
you are on the record and likely to appear on all of those things. So get used to it or this is a good time to opt out. This is going to be I hope a
fascinating conversation with two people I have been hoping to sit down and talk with for months now. And we're going to start with a conversation
sort of here on stage but we're very quickly going to end up in a conversation with the audience and with the online audience. So please be thinking
of questions you want to ask my colleagues conversations we want to have. To my immediate left Professor Intisar Rabb who
teaches at Harvard Law School. She's an expert on Islamic law also an expert on international law and jurisprudence and particularly where the two
of those intersect. A little bit further to my left Manal Omar. She is vice president for the US Institutes of Peace where she heads up the
Africa and Middle East center. She has an incredible long history of work in international development and international relations, conflict
mediation. So we have two folks here who are some of the world's leading experts on Islam's place in the world today. And to frame this
conversation a little bit I sort of want to tell you the history of how we were supposed to end up on stage and how we're now on stage. Some of you
may remember that we did a conference this summer called "Forbidden Research" and Intisar and Manal were both going to be there and then
it's Obama's fault. He invited both of these incredible women to break the fast at the White House.
>>INTISAR: It was an Eid celebration.
>>ETHAN: It was an Eid celebration, my apologies. So we had scheduled during the end of Eid the President invited both of my friends
here to the Eid Celebration. For some reason having an Eid celebration with the president was more fun than showing up for a Media Lab event.
So we didn't get to talk during Forbidden Research. But I want to talk about why Forbidden Research was the topic that we were
using to frame this conversation. We're at a moment in American politics where this current election seems determined to marginalize
everyone; so women, people of color, immigrants and particularly Muslims. And in this current environment it's actually almost really hard to talk
about problems within Islam because the instinctive response is to sort of say hey, problems aside; we've got to find a way to keep
living together all as citizens of this country. But months ago when we were talking about this when the world wasn't quite as crazy as it is right
now, we were talking about a very challenging topic within Islam which is the fact that in many parts of the world there are countries and areas
where there are widespread human rights violations. Sometimes these violations occur in countries that are majority Muslim. Sometimes
people try to use Islam to justify human rights violations. How do we deal with that problem? How do we deal with that apparent perceived
conflict between Islam and human rights? So we wanted to bring in two experts on that topic to talk through what can often be a challenging and
difficult conversation. So we're going to jump into that but first I wanted to give my friends a chance to talk about their everyday work and what's led
them to do this work. So Intisar you came here straight out of class. Tell us what you're doing at Harvard and what's led you here.
>>INTISAR: Sure. So I teach at Harvard Law School. I teach courses on Islamic and comparative and international law as well as
advanced legislation and criminal law. And the two sides of this equation, Islamic and comparative law and legislation or interpretation
in American law, especially American criminal law are dual tracks that I've pursued since I started my studies back when I grew up in D.C. And I
just noticed the great disparities between the two parts of D.C. Almost like we talk about two Americas where there's a poor, underclass
where criminal justice was a real problem especially in southeast D.C. and I am going to circle back eventually. But then in northwest
D.C. where Georgetown University is where I went to college, where the White House is, where K Street, think tanks and those sorts of
things are, it's the pristine D.C. where everyone is thinking about and making policies and laws. And so I think growing up that gave me a law
orientation but seeing those disparities, those vast disparities made me want to see how can one address them and why is it that when we
have resources we're not channeling them to address the real and present problems that we see in front of us. And so for me, I've majored
both in government and Arabic and have pursued those tracks throughout to see what I could learn about the American legal system and the criminal
justice system. And then I was interested in seeing what analogs there were in the Islamic law context. And one of the big answers for me
or perhaps remaining questions that I initially asked about how is it that we have these great disparities and we may have the resources to do
something about it but no one's doing anything about it had to do with something about education and law and policy. So in pursuing those paths I
was determined to educate myself and then help educate others and give access to the resources and knowledge about the issues and empower
others to be able to do something about it.
>>ETHAN: And so these questions about inequality led you both deep into US law and constitutional law but also led you deep into
Islamic law.
>>INTISAR: Exactly.
>>ETHAN: What does it mean as an American growing up in Washington, D.C. going to college at Georgetown, how do you pursue that sort of
education in Islamic law? What's involved with that?
>>INTISAR: So for me there were not a lot of resources here in America. So I did what I could at Georgetown and then I ended up going abroad
and I spent a few years studying and travelling in Egypt, Syria when it was a much calmer nation and place of study and Morocco, Iran and other
countries. And then I also went to Yale Law School and went to Princeton University and did a PhD there. So it's been a long track of
constant study in a way that I love and have gained from teachers and conversations along the way.
>>ETHAN: Manal talk to me about what US Institutes of Peace does, what your work in the African Middle East Center does and a little bit
about how you got here. I would also love it if you would point out that the two of you have known each other since high school which I didn't find
out until I was sitting down.
>>INTISAR: There's a D.C. connection.
>>MANAL: Absolutely. The D.C. and the Muslim youth network as well so we kind of came together a lot. And I'll start how I kind of got into
the career and with USAP. So you know I was raised in Spartanburg, South Carolina to a family of Palestinian refugees. So I feel like that
explains everything. So, from a very early age I was told that different parts of my identity were contradictory and I never felt it. I actually felt that
they really reinforced one another. And you know I went in initially to the humanitarian sector you know as having so many families still in the
Middle East I felt the need to give back having so much opportunity in the US. But as I was in the humanitarian sector I started realizing that
everything we're told about conflict that you know, sectarian issues, the identity issues, are actually surface. But the root in my opinion really is
resources. So I took some time off from humanitarian and worked for the World Bank and got a few years on my Master's in economics
because I wanted to understand the roots of conflict not put out fires. And so I moved from humanitarian to economic development and then
went back to humanitarian after a few years with the World Bank and the UN to work more on the ground with civil society particularly in Iraq,
Afghanistan and South Sudan. And from there you know, I spent quite a lot of time doing the humanitarian work again and then got frustrated
and said whatever I'm doing in this region isn't really going to affect what's happening in conflict because the decisions are actually made outside
of the region. And so I really looked at it: do I move back to the UN in New York? Do I go and work you know, for the EU? I had done when I
was with ASAM I had done a lot work when I was in Brussels; so do I look at kind of influencing policy? And it just came really clear going back to
D.C. that the decisions that are made in D.C. is what's affecting the Middle East and Africa the most. And so US Institute of Peace you know, at
that time had approached me and it was almost the perfect match because it's a federal institute. So it's a US funded by Congress. It was created
by Congress. What I really appreciate about the Institute it doesn't see conflict as negative. It sees conflict as a really important part of
development, of evolving. But how do you deal with conflict nonviolently? And that's the big work that I really focus on. And oftentimes, particularly
working with youth you know, they'll say, Manal we're so angry; we need to take action. And I say great, be angry just don't be violent. And guess
what? Here's a whole toolbox of things that actually work. Like most people don't realize that non-violent revolutions are 80% more
sustainable. Violent revolutions fall back into violence. And so when people start to hear, I'm not talking about kumbaya let's all hold hands and
no one holds a gun. I'm talking about what works, you get a lot more reaction.
>>ETHAN: So I think that's an amazing way of thinking about peace and nonviolence rather than avoidance of conflict.
>>MANAL: Uh-huh.
>>ETHAN: I think there's a way in which this notion of hey, let's not talk about what's difficult. Let's not get into the issues that divide us is an
experience that a lot of people are very used to and very used to experiencing. Could I just get a favor? Could someone in the back maybe go
down and figure out who's having that loud conversation and see if we could just move them somewhere else? I'm having a very hard time
hearing our speakers. If someone could just move downstairs and ask that person to move. They can use my office if they'd like. So Manal I
want to sort of ask you maybe really in some ways sort of the hardest question around this which is when we put aside and I'll use Hillary
Clinton's words, the deplorable position of we're terrified of Islam. Let's not deal with anyone from Islamic countries but actually deal with the really
difficult and complicated issues which have to do with the ways in which majority Muslim countries often are dealing with very serious human rights
problems, very serious human rights violations. How do we think about Islam as a tool for human rights, how do we move beyond this question of
is Islam in conflict with human rights?
>>MANAL: I mean I think -- I take one step back and just talk about what's the role of religion in peace building. And oftentimes when you go on
the ground especially if you're involved in negotiations which is a lot of what I do as well, you ask who holds moral authority because you
don't want to be talking to people and we've seen this and unfortunately we just saw it in Colombia but we saw it in the Arab Israeli, you sign
documents. If the street doesn't agree it's just ink on paper. And so oftentimes the answer to who holds moral authority is religious leaders. And
like you said, we happen to be in conflicts that are very much Muslim majority countries. And so that then ties to what does Hasan say. And you
see the polling that shows that even average, secular non-practicing Muslims still refer to Sharia. So it's very hard to say let's not look at
that; let's look at UN laws. You know, I do a lot on women's issues and no one wants to hear about 1325. But when I can go and actually talk about
this is what Islam actually says, this is what Sharia is saying it expands the conversation where it actually has traction in the street. It's not
just an elite, academic conversation. So for me, religion in general is very important. But as you mentioned in Islam, it's very difficult not to go into
Sharia if you want to have long-term change, particularly change in laws. Now one of the things that I'm concerned about and as you
alluded to, the elections but I would go even pre-elections. I'm someone who goes pre-9/11, pre-Iraq Afghanistan war maybe over the last 100
years. You know the global amount which is a loose term but when you look at Muslim across the world, we have been on a defensive for
almost 100 years. And I want you to imagine what's your posture when you're on the defensive; right? You're crouched. Your hands
are at exactly you're covering your face and you're covering your heart; right? And so you're not ready to respond because you're on the
defensive. Now for the progress in dealing with human rights and to really deal with issues of reconstruction and the difficult conversations to
happen, you need to have an open heart. You need to feel relaxed. You need to be able to really take on those issues. So the elections and the
posturing is really limited not only the western conversation but even the conversations on the ground. I mean I will tell you there are moments
and times where I had to catch myself because in defending Islam, I almost slipped into defending the Taliban. And I was like what am I
doing? And so it's really hard to navigate when everyone is constantly attacking and telling you what your religion says when in fact you know for
a fact that's not the full effect and that's not the reasons for conflict.
>>ETHAN: But let's grab that example and wrestle with it; right?
>>MANAL: Uh-huh.
>>ETHAN: So the Taliban have advocated a particularly brutal set of practices. They've been particularly horrific for women, they've also been
horrific for minority populations. They've been horrific for practicing Muslims --
>>MANAL: Absolutely.
>>ETHAN: -- who find themselves facing incredibly strict and often broken interpretations. How is the global ummah dealing with the
problem of the Taliban and groups like the Taliban announcing an Islamic state.
>>MANAL: Yeah.
>>ETHAN: Announcing and claiming this high ground around strict interpretations?
>>MANAL: So I definitely don't advocate for rose colored glasses. I mean I'll never forget the time I was in Khartoum and had Muslim leaders
explaining to me why Darfur makes sense. And it was very hard to hear you know not only as a Muslim but as a human to say this is genocide.
So I don't advocate rose colored glasses and I think that's the key is how do you actually go down and acknowledge this is wrong, this is not
-- but most importantly there is no roots in Islam for this type of extreme interpretation. And that's where you know I think I was telling you earlier I
shamelessly use Intisar but I'm not an Islamic scholar and I think it's very important to recognize when you don't have the scholarship. So I'll
reach out to Intisar, I'll reach out to a few people that I have on speed dial saying these tribal leaders are telling me this. I know it's not true. I
don't know why. And so marrying the Islamic scholarship because you can't make things up. I'm really good at that part but it doesn't work. So
marrying the scholarship with the activism and the practitioner on the ground it really does work. And I've seen it happen. You know, for example I
was working in a remote area in Yemen [Indiscernible] and I was doing traditional birth attendance, nothing political. It was very much
about women's issues and women's rights. It has one of the worst mortality rates for pregnant women and we could not break through on early
marriage and we kept trying. And when we went to the religious leaders who were not signing up to the campaign again, they have moral authority
so no one really cares what the US and the UN says. I went to one of the religious leaders and I said this is causing harm. I'm no longer
struggling as a practitioner, I'm now struggling as a Muslim. Like how can you be silent when we're seeing all of this harm done? And they told me
they said well what is the word you keep using to us? And I said, "harm". They said well, what is the word you're using in your campaign? And I
said, "early marriage". And he said the early part opens up a whole jurisprudence questions we're not ready to go down. If you call it safe marriage
instead of early marriage, you eliminate the jurisprudence problem and we'll sign on. And so if we had 5 years ago bothered to talk to the
religious leaders, we would have had them 5 years. Not only did they sign on to the campaign but the law was actually changed to 17 and we
had -- I mean it was like day and night before and after interacting with the religious leaders. So my challenges were great and instrumentalizing
religious leaders.
>>ETHAN: Yeah.
>>MANAL: Please make a fatwa. Please condemn this. Please do this. But we don't actually engage them when we're designing our
programs. And that's what I really advocate and that's what I really appreciate about USAP. It really does engage from a design process and
doesn't just instrumentalize religious leaders, take them on stage, get them in cameras but actually say how do we make a difference.
>>ETHAN: So Intisar, from this we get a sense for just how important interpretation of law turns out to be, how this argument about jurisprudence
handled one way turns out to be support for safe marriage rather than early marriage. But one way or another it starts protecting girls under the
age of 16 in some cases from being forced into marriages. At the same time I note with some alarm that you're affiliated with this group called
Sharia Source. Wait, it turns out I'm affiliated with it too. Sorry.
>>INTISAR: Turns out.
>>ETHAN: And I've noted creeping Sharia law coming into the United States, the danger that our jurisprudence is suddenly going to be subject
to jurisprudence in other countries. Were we able to get that image up? Can we pull that billboard up for -- right. So you can see you
know, Sharia is creeping in everywhere. It's showing up in billboards even in Michigan. So can you start with translating this billboard for us
and then maybe moving from there?
>>INTISAR: Sure. Cause this is a really funny example of the bogeyman of Sharia. It says [Speaking Arabic] Donald Trump. So it says
Donald Trump doesn't -- is not able to read this but he is still scared of it. So it's using this Arabic text to just be scary as it has come to be in the --
in some circles for Donald Trump and some of his advisors, Frank Gaffney and others. Whereas, if you look into it and you read it and
you translate it and you understand it, it's really not about fear. And I think similarly with Sharia, which is often left untranslated so that it sounds
scary and foreign. You know, it's something that has been the object of a lot of fear. There is something like two dozen states that have
initiated laws to ban Sharia, this creeping Sharia. When in fact, Sharia literally means path just like Halakhah does, Jewish law. It can be translated
as Islamic law although many Muslims would say it incorporates much more than that; sort of the moral and ethical norms that should lead to
goodness, a just society, fairness. Then there's a translation of Sharia or Islamic law into practice or human understandings of what that fair, just,
good life is that Sharia is supposed to express. The Arabic term for that is fiqh or understanding and the manifestations of that are many fold. So
there's no one code, there's no one book that we can go to and say herein lies Sharia.
>>ETHAN: Uh-huh.
>>INTISAR: Sharia, it's more a -- it's become more of a diverse set of conversations and negotiations about principles that have indeed
changed from medieval times to modern. If I were to be very critical of the modern manifestations, I'd say that I don't think that
Muslim jurists have always done a stellar job of figuring out and doing the deep work like the example that Manal brought up about early
marriage. What does that mean and yes, we have a term for this and Sharia but can we really justify not going with what they did in the past? I
don't think they've always done the work of figuring out what the principle was --
>>MANAL: Right.
>>INTISAR: -- and the cultural context in which Islam emerged in 7th century Arabia and how that principle might translate into modern conditions
and circumstances, one's facts on the ground change, one's culture's change. And so you end up having both a mismatch sometimes between
what the old laws were that made sense for a certain time and place and how new laws are being applied in Muslim majority countries that
may lead to a lot of human rights and civil rights and women's rights violations. So all that said, I do think there's still an appeal of Sharia of Islamic
law where most Muslims organize their lives according to rules of getting married, of food that they eat.
>>ETHAN: Uh-huh.
>>INTISAR: Rituals about how to pray and when to go to the mosque. How to bury, how to do inheritance rules. All of these are private law
rules that US law it sees as positive, it sees as adding to the fabric of American society where everyone is able to practice aspects of their
religion that are private and we celebrate diversity. And so to the extent that Islamic law is in the US, it tends to be in these private law aspects
generally. But then I'd say that there's a public aspect ---
>>ETHAN: Right.
>>INTISAR: -- as well that I think is actually -- It's a, it's a often papered over in little known stories about Muslims and their public role in the
1960's Civil Rights Movement. You have Muhammad Ali who just died this summer. You know, he's the goat; right? He's the greatest of all
times and this man was a Muslim and took a stand on the basis of his religion and was willing to give up everything that he had fought for in
terms of being a heavyweight champion and took it all the way to the Supreme Court and won and eventually was able to return to boxing. He had a
disagreement with fighting and killing people in Vietnam where he didn't find that there was a justified taking of life, that this was a justified war
on the basis of his religion. And so I think that as an example and that went along with millions of others who converted to Islam in the 60's out of a
social justice impetus to join the Civil Rights Movement right alongside those who were in the Black church --
>>ETHAN: Uh-huh.
>>INTISAR: -- with Martin Luther King out of an impetus for their vision of justice based on their religion. You have that going in parallel in the
Islamic context and that has been the largest public manifestation of Islam in America.
>>ETHAN: So I want to follow this sort of public manifestation of Islam. We were talking a little bit backstage about the notion of Civil Rights Sharia
which I love and I want to explore. But I want to take advantage of having two people on the stage for whom Islam is a central part of your life to sort
of ask questions about -- questions of Islamic law and personal interpretation. So, I had the pleasure and honor of being married to a rabbi for
17 years. We're no longer married but it was a wonderful stretch. When my beloved ex moved out of my home, she decided to keep kosher.
And so she had to figure out what that was going to mean because depending on where you are in Judaism, kosher can mean a number of different
things. And the big issue that she found herself thinking about is is chicken meat? Now there is Biblical prescription about cooking a calf in its
mother's milk. This is churned out in Jewish law to mean we don't have cheeseburgers because we don't want to be combining dairy products
with meat products. Chickens don't have milk. But it turns out that in medieval Europe so that Jewish men could present meat for the Sabbath
meal, chicken was written in to be meat so that their sense of pride would be okay, that they weren't putting beef or lamb on the table. So my
feminist ex looked at this and said, yeah chicken's not meat. I'm not going to worry about it. If my kid wants to have chicken nuggets and
macaroni and cheese, we're not going to get in the way of that. But what she did in that was Halakhah interpretation. She looked at the rulings
of different rabbis. She looked at how people had come to her decisions on that. She looked at decisions within her own community about
people's practice. How does this work for the two of you within Islam as far as making decisions about how you're interpreting this sort
of rich, you know multi-varied space around Sharia to make your decisions about how to live?
>>INTISAR: So I'll say something about the landscape of the diversity and then punt to Manal. And that is to say -- so I did mention that Sharia
or Islamic law it's not a single code and a lot of times it does involve this sort of grappling with individual interpretations that may ultimately be
very personal but that also link you to a larger community within the United States and more globally like the idea of the global ummah or
Muslim community. One of the areas that this comes up that I can recall also having to do with meat has to do with how animals are treated and
whether the fair treatment of animals is required for meat to be halal the Islamic equivalent of kosher. And so some say you know the principle
of the rules of halal were that animals should be well treated and others just say oh, the animal just needs to be slaughtered in a certain way.
And so I think there's -- and I think the question isn't resolved. And there's work that needs to be done there to see what are the principles and
how do we knowing the industry practices now about animals perhaps getting stung or being in pain or something like that is our understanding of
Islamic law and what it's aiming at to figure out what rules we would follow. But just to say a little bit about how scholars approach that question -- I
mean Islam has four different schools or approaches to Islamic law amongst the Sunnis and then another three at least different schools
amongst the Shia. The Shia, the mainstream Shia, Imamis or Twelvers also have exemplars who give a few prominent ones in the world like
Sistani who give advisory opinions on these things. So a Muslim might go ask one of their leaders or someone that knows Islamic law that
may give opinions about it to figure out what they will do personally. But then there are a lot of Muslims who don't follow a particular school,
particularly in America. So they're often trying to figure it out by comparing this diverse range of opinions in figuring out which one makes sense
for their context. So I think that's the best and the worst thing about Islamic law that it's enormously dynamic and flexible and it's a constant
negotiation of meaning and trying to find meaning much the way American law is. I mean the Justices on the Supreme Court are constantly
debating some of the same things: questions of free speech, questions of women's rights over their bodies, questions of equal protection and
discrimination, how should that manifest with our modern conditions. And I see the same in Islamic jurisprudence. So it remains an open
question.
>>ETHAN: I mean Manal how does this play out for you? I mean the challenge of course is that faiths make demands of us.
>>MANAL: Yeah.
>>ETHAN: They offer instructions on how we live and what to do but as Intisar was just pointing out they're complicated, they're rich and simply
looking at it and essentially saying you know, this imam offers this interpretation isn't in some ways sort of the simplified version of this. How does
this play out in your life?
>>MANAL: So Ethan, I come from a very different background but one of the things that I really appreciated and kind of helped me
understand myself was a quote from Pope Francis when he said as dangerous as religious extremism is religious illiteracy. And for me as a
religiously illiterate person that really proved to be true. You know I grew up in a family what we call Ramadan Muslim so like in Ramadan it's okay,
we're Muslim and you know we fast, but most of the year we're kind of not so tied; we're more nationalist than religious. And that served as a
disservice for me when I was growing up because as I became more religious I didn't know where to turn. And so my actual basis was very
much a [Indiscernible] basis because that was what was the most accessible and you know publications are often free. And so you know
people always tease me when like [Indiscernible] tendency comes back to the top because I had to unlearn to learn as happens a lot. And so almost
every 10 years I have some faith shaking experience. And first of all, being in the humanitarian world you cannot not question God;
right? You see some of the worst atrocities take place in front of you and oftentimes in the name of God. I mean it's not only Muslims, turn to
Burma, it's Buddhist monks. I mean if Buddhism can be manipulated, I don't know what religion is safe. So you really struggle going back and forth
to really make you know, come to terms with religion in general. But specifically, with Islam because that is you know my religion. And what
I've learned is have faith in the faith. Push, push into the difficult conversations. Two years ago was my next faith shaking experience. I went
through a very difficult divorce and it really shook me up and I had to admit to myself there were things I would not have accepted unless --
because I had understood it to be Islamic in the past. And so I felt betrayed. I felt betrayed by my religious leaders. I felt betrayed by my
community and there was a part of me that was again, the faith was shaken. When I delved deeper into what Islam actually says, I realized
that it was culture that had misled me. It wasn't religion. And so I started a fellowship called Safina Fellowship that looks at the intersection of
women, sexuality and Islam because that's the red line. Everyone tells us you can't go talk about sexuality. And I actually started an online
dialogue series called Cross Red Lines because I want to push those and I want to ask the questions and I haven't been disappointed. Most
religious leaders will go and it's really interesting to me because they go pre-100 years to find incredibly liberating texts on women. Whereas
the last 100 years which was most of my background is very negative towards women. And so what does Islam actually say? Again, the
difficulty of you know, religious leaders taking on the hard challenges. I actually do want to make a side note about that because it's important to look
at the education system internationally. It's not just about religious. And so most of the systems on Africa and Middle East go through a process
of your high school grade determines your degree. And so if you're the top percentile you're a medical student, you're an engineer, your only
worthy career is in the Middle East. But if you pass with like a D, you become a religious leader. You're automatically pushed into the religious
school. So in the past our greatest minds were doing the interpretation. Now and I'm speaking specifically about Middle East and North Africa,
now you have the weakest minds, not the weakest but in terms of education entering into it. So that's one of the difficulties also in progress.
And I also want to make a note about our justice systems overseas. Because the justice system is so corrupt even women who know they're
going to be disadvantaged by going to a Sharia court will choose a Sharia court because of corruption and because it's so slow. So even if
they're not going to get all their rights, they'd rather be divorced and free than have to wait 10 years because sometimes some of the justice
system goes that complicated. So when we're talking about a lot of things it's just important to look at the structural issues that are built into
institutions and systems that then put religion at a disadvantage.
>>ETHAN: So I want to pick up something you said a moment before in this which was in many cases what's happening is people are bumping
into tribal prescriptions. They're not necessarily leaning on text for interpretations of law; they're using text to justify cultural prohibitions. For me
the clearest lesson I got in this was from my friend Calita Brohy who was visiting the Media Lab from Balochistan where she's been doing
work with women who are incredibly isolated because the local tribal prescription is that women of marriageable age simply should never
be seen by men outside their family. And what this ends up meaning functionally is that they end up at home all the time. And what she found
herself doing was organizing women's only spaces, mostly sewing circles to produce goods for export. But then once she had women
together was working on literacy trainings. And the main thing that she was working on was Sharia law and helping people understand the
rights that they had under Islam. How do we deal with this situation where Islam gets very tightly tied up with tribal prohibitions that may now run
counter to international human rights law but where Islam then gets selectively interpreted to justify what in I would argue is unjustifiable?
>>MANAL: Uh-huh.
>>INTISAR: Yeah, and I would too. I think that's a real problem that there's a cherry picking of Islamic law or Sharia interpretations for heinous
acts of violence, of oppression of women, of racism, of stealing money, of all kinds of corruption and that sort of thing. And so we see
this with ISIS. I mean they're saying that what we're doing is Islamic. And the problem is that Islamic law does have that sort of appeal and if
you can prop yourself up as a religious leader, someone like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi did you've got some sort of appeal. Although he does not
have the actual training to make these pronouncements. We have in Islamic law really an originalist legal tradition in some ways where
appeals to Islamic law are really appeals back to what Muhammad the Prophet or Ali and some of the Imams and the Shia context did in the 7th,
8th, 9th centuries during what I call this long founding period of Islamic law. So we love the Broadway show "Hamilton" and we go back to
the Founding Fathers here. So imagine that Muslims see these figures in a similar way as just really central to what they do. You don't find
that in my view, that any of these early figures justified the acts of violence that we see justified now by Islamic law. And so my answer to that is
this Sharia Source that you mentioned earlier if we take it face value that there is a lack of information and maybe and literacy and that
explains the problems of -- I mean that's putting the best face on it. But that explains some of the problems of both the ability of ill-intending leaders
trying to grab political power with justifications based on Sharia which they realize will resonate with large swaths of the population in Muslim
majority countries. It gets over the problem of allowing them to make claims about Sharia if you can provide access to content about what Islamic
law actually is. So we have this online portal where we seek to do that. What are sources, primary sources of Islamic law? What do they
actually say in all of their diversity? And then how do actual scholars, not the politicians and the warmongers, but how do actual scholars of
Islamic law interpret those things? So I think it's unfortunate that someone like Donald Trump and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi have the exact same
vision of Sharia. [Laughter]. But I think they can be educated if they would get over the sort of bogeyman view and look at what it actually says.
>>ETHAN: Well this is interesting. What drew me to try to help with the Sharia Source project was not even so much being able to triangulate
between dozens of different sources because I'm not you know, qualified to do that nor is it where I'm looking for my own guidance. But what I
found fascinating about this was undercutting this notion of Sharia as a singular definitive. And so once you start looking at this and someone says
Sharia law and you start saying which?
>>INTISAR: Yeah, you can almost never make that statement that Sharia says this.
>>ETHAN: So but Manal, you're dealing with this all the time in communities where you work very explicitly on issues of women's rights.
>>MANAL: Uh-huh.
>>ETHAN: When you find yourself and I don't know that you've worked in Pakistan but I know that you've worked in Afghanistan. When you find
yourself bumping into something whereas you said, you know it's not right. You're calling Intisar and looking for the textural backup for this we're
hoping we'll just get you Sharia source on your phone.
>>INTISAR: Yes, we got a little bit of that.
>>ETHAN: How are you navigating -- how do people react when you say that's not Islamic, that's tribal?
>>MANAL: So I never say that.
>>ETHAN: Yeah.
>>MANAL: You know my big thing is to listen and so I usually prompt with questions. So like when I went to Yemen I said, I'm really confused.
This is harmful, how are you silent? I'm not going saying you must say this, this is what Islam says. I definitely -- I did it once where I tried to argue
Islamically and it led me into a murtadd court, into infidel court. So will not do that process again. [Laughter]. I had to go all the way to the
Supreme Court to be like that's not me. And I'm not, I'm not very practicing. I mean I am you know in some ways a buffet Muslim in the sense
that I practice spiritually what serves me and I think that's what religion is meant to be in my personal opinion. But I always do point out the
cherry picking because men in particular, patriarchy institutions are really great at that. So you have nowhere near the same debate on
interests in Islamic communities that you have on women's rights.
>>ETHAN: Yeah.
>>MANAL: And so I'm always pushing back saying there is more verses very clearly forbidding interests and yet you're like obsessed
with four wives or you're obsessed with this and there's actually less support for this. And so usually that opens a very healthy conversation
and people will be like well, this is this cause it's hard to debate that type of issue. So I lead through questions. But one thing I want to say is
the international community is also cherry picking when convenient. And so I remember when I was in Iraq in 2003 there had been a nomination
for a female judge from Najaf very powerful woman. And she was nominated to become sworn in and at the time it was the Americans
who were in control through the coalition provisional authority. And the Americans were like oh no, we can't do that. Sharia doesn't
accept a female judge. And of course, what they were really worried about were the Sudras, so very small extreme group. And they didn't want to
upset the Sudras so the Americans were like we can't swear her in, this is not according to Islam. So Judge Nidal said say you're afraid. So she
went to Ayatollah Sistani and she said this is what they're telling me. And at the time Ayatollah Sistani was trying to stay out of political and was
giving verbal advice. He actually gave a written fatwa in support of her judgment. Because he was saying I'm okay if you want to do political
deals but don't blame Islam. So we do this a lot too as the international. We become so culturally and religiously relative that people will try and tell
you oh, we can't affect the religion and culture. Whereas we should be pushing as much as the jurists are pushing for change. But I would say
always my solution is more religion. You know more religious literacy. You know, another example I can give you from Sistani was similar
to what you were saying about women. A lot of widows in the southern part of Iraq truly believed it was forbidden for them to work. And so they
weren't working and you're talking about a war-torn area not only recently but you know Iran, Iraq, I mean you have a history of war. So you
have so many female-headed households that the work that I was doing was with women from international trying to teach them a job. And the
women, no one was stopping them, they were refusing to come. So I went to Sistani's office and asked again, saying you know am I wrong?
These women need work. He said it's not only allowed, it's required for them to have a job skill. The next day our offices were flooded. So it is
important to actually --
>>ETHAN: Right.
>>MANAL: -- look and bring. And again, I can tell them all that I think, really good at that part but again, no traction. So you need people who have
moral authority. I mean we do this in the security sector all the time. We ask those questions but for some reason we're not doing it when it comes
to religious leaders. We're not asking the moral authority question.
>>ETHAN: So you've made the case that the key to working in a lot of the places where you're working is increased religious literacy, figuring out
who has the authority, having those conversations, moving beyond these really simplistic rulings and all of this. So help me out
with what seems to me to be often a radical oversimplification. By the way, we're going to open up to questions in a moment. I have one
question each for these extraordinary women and then I will cede the floor to what you want to know. But I think at the most brutally
oversimplified we tend to look at the Middle East in terms of our verses too when we try to get to some tiny level of sophisticated shin further than
that we start looking at Sunni, Shia. I think anyone who knows that they don't understand the Middle East and I am smart enough to know what
I don't know, understands that that's a radical oversimplification. What in the work that you're doing understanding the beliefs through the lens
of religious literacy, what are the key takeaways that you would sort of give us in reading the situation in Syria, the situation in Iraq at moment?
>>MANAL: Absolutely. I mean one thing is I really appreciate you saying the Middle East. I mean one of the things that personally hurts me
is when people keep saying the Arab world, the Arab world, the Arab world, because the Middle East has always been so rich in our diversity.
We have Kurds, we have Armenians, we have you know the Imazi, we have like so many different ethnicities that go beyond Arab --
>>ETHAN: [Indiscernible].
>>MANAL: -- that it makes me really sad when I hear Arab world, Arab world, Arab world and it is a Western construct. Like the region never saw
itself as the Arab world. And similarly with faiths; right? We have the three Abrahamic faiths came out of the region. You have wonderful faiths that
are pre-Erastian, you have Sabaeen, you have the Yazidis. I mean this is a source of pride for that region which is unfortunately because of the
conflict completely shifting. So the demographic shift will really unstabilize or destabilize the world, not only the region. So it's something that
protection of minorities is something that's very important. I'm a huge believer as I mentioned before that the roots of conflict are resources.
And so you really have to look at the resources issues in the Middle East: water, land, access, corruption. For me those are far more important.
And in fact, it wasn't from the Middle East but from Africa a Nigerian leader told me stop talking about Boko Haram, help us to deal with
corruption; that's what's crippling us. And so you know, it's really important that we're looking at what the priorities of these countries are and not
just our own interpretation. But people love good and bad; right? We love our superheroes and our villains and so it's so complicated to get nuanced
when you're talking about conflict if you're not able to say who's good and who's bad. I've literally had generals tell me, tell me who the bad
guys are. I'm like I wish I could but it's never that simple. When I was in Libya, I was in Benghazi in the early days you saw young men picking up
guns who were really neighborhood watches. They were truly protecting their communities. These are the militias that we're dealing with
today. So you know if we get in early enough where we make sure that they don't turn to violence as the only way of solving conflict I
believe that we can make really important change. Unfortunately things have to be on fire. We always sacrifice the warm for the hot. And
so we're putting out fires, putting out fires, putting out fires. I go into detail. I did a debate with Ayaan Hirsi-Ali on foreign policy; it's a two-part
series where you know, she argues the problem is Islam and I argue that the problem is instrumentalization of Islam and here are the real
roots of conflict. So I don't take too much time I'll just refer that article to people who are interested because I do go into detail in terms of the civil, in
terms of the institutions and the other issues that I think are the roots of conflict in the Middle East.
>>ETHAN: So Intisar, before we open this up one of the things we were talking about backstage is that when we talk about Islam in the
US context, we're often talking about immigration, we're talking about people coming from really rich and different cultural backgrounds, your
background is as an American Muslim and specifically as an African American Muslim and there is a specific tradition coming out very much
of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's of people turning to Islam much as many of the leaders that we tend to know better in our current
history of the Civil Rights Movement found a great deal of basis and rooting within the Christian church. Can you talk about how this
idea that you're putting forward of civil rights, Sharia sort of comes from that history and from that origin.
>>INTISAR: Sure. And I appreciate you bringing us back to that as well because I do think it's a history that's not well understood or often
told. And so from my personal experience there is this idea of what we might call civil rights Sharia. So when I look at my mom and I have
had conversations with her and my father this is before they were Muslim, they grew up in the Baltimore area. My mother could not remembers
a time when she went to go drink from a water fountain and her mother stopped her and said, "No, that's for Whites only". My father had to ride
on the back of the bus. I mean these are stories that we all know and it's not far in the distant past. I think we forget that because of the tremendous
progress we've made but there's still progress to go. But it's a reminder to me and even talking to my parents that that's such -- so recently in our
rearview mirror. And when they came of age, they're teenagers and in their early 20's, and they begin to think and question what is it that they can
do to change what they saw as manifest injustices of that type where they couldn't get jobs I mean beyond the sort of rampant discrimination
beyond water fountains and busses and transportation but jobs and just living in society. And what they saw in Islam was a system that
said that every person is equal. And there is certainly you know foundations and principles of Islam and Islamic law that promote this idea that
everyone is equal and you are distinguished according to merit and your contributions to society but no one will know what that is except
God. And so you also should not judge anyone. So that really appealed to them and that was really the impetus that made them become
Muslim. And I'm talking about my parents but I'm really referring to some 3 million people alongside of them that also converted during that time. And
they opened their own businesses if they couldn't get jobs in White or American society. So they gave jobs, they cleaned up neighborhoods, they
got you know people off the street and that sort of thing. And so when I ask them now sort of what drove you to do these things, this is the story they
tell. And they say this was our vision of Sharia.
>>ETHAN: And I think this notion of radical equality is something that is visible in Islam in a way that it can be hard to find in other faiths.
Looking at just the physical dress for the hajj and the ways in which people from different cultural backgrounds, different parts of the world --
>>INTISAR: Different Classes.
>>ETHAN: -- different social classes. No, I mean it's a complicated world. There is people taking very comfortable house trips --
>>INTISAR: That's true.
>>ETHAN: -- and at the end of the day --
>>INTISAR: They have to wear the same --
>>ETHAN: -- everybody's wearing the same sheet and lining up you know in the same --
>>INTISAR: Yeah. That's the beautiful visual representation that really resonated with Malcolm X if you remember from the autobiography of
Malcolm X that said you know there was a nation of Islam that had this Black nationalist tinge to it. But he said it's not about being Black of Black
nationalism but there really is this radical equality and it encompasses all people regardless of skin color.
>>ETHAN: So what's the role for this group of men and women who embraced Islam 3 million strong, who have built this uniquely American part
of the global ummah, what's the role and voice of that community in these larger dialogues at a moment where we're having a dialogue about
inside or outside or we're having a dialogue about incredible, persistent racial inequality in the United States where we're having a dialogue
about implicit bias where we're now talking about a group of people that in some ways are identified with two of the most marginalized groups in
American society.
>>INTISAR: Yeah. I -- I mean I actually think that the role and the duty or onus on them is the same that it is on every American. When we
talked a bit backstage we talked about how religion takes on the local tenor of society. And so when there are tribal problems or conflicts or
conflicts over resources those are the things that bleed into religion as well. And I think that for anyone that cares about equality or civil rights in
America it may just be that this group of people, people who are both Black and Muslims may be like the canary in the coal mine that feel it, that
gasp for air that you know that you can identify as suffering from these problems. But it's in the atmosphere and it affects us all. And I'd say that
the burden then is on all of us that for anyone who cares about equality, about the civil rights project that we have unfolding in America, the promise of
the American Constitution and all of it's -- the rights therein, we all should educate ourselves and continue to interact with one another to
assure that those rights are met both at home and where we see it abroad.
>>ETHAN: Please.
>>MANAL: If I could just jump in on this conversation cause as an immigrant Muslim the African American community were so essential in
shaping my identity. And part of it was you know my parents had been kicked out of four countries before settling in the US and they were like we
are not getting kicked out of this one, like tone it down, blend in, do what you have to do. You know we're not going anywhere. And in fact,
when I wore the hiyab my mom didn't speak to me for 6 months. She was like this isn't what I signed up for and it's the African American
community's fault. No, I'm kidding. But interacting with you know Intisar and other people when I was young and being told no, this is your
country. Like you're a citizen now, there is no getting kicked out. You know Muslims have been here from the beginning. We came with the slave
ships and that constant reminder stop feeling foreign. This is now your land.
>>ETHAN: Thomas Jefferson's hurrah.
>>MANAL: Right. And Tayyibah Taylor who founded Azizah magazine. Sister Ayisha in New York who are women in Islam like they were my
older mentors in the sense of Black women who were proud but also proud of their religion. And so it took away the you know the immigrant, the
fear that my family had. And I don't know if I would have had that if I didn't have that interaction with the African American community.
>>ETHAN: Oh, thank you. That's hugely helpful. I think you are all getting a sense for the fact that I would happily talk to my two friends for
the next 6 hours. I want to be slightly less selfish and sort of see if we can open up this conversation. Has this brought up any questions
for folks here in the audience? Put your hands up. We've got a microphone roaming around. Please let's go down in front here. And if you
wouldn't mind just starting by introducing yourself and then putting a question forward.
>>SPEAKER: I'm Sohan, I'm in the Media Lab and may I ask one question to each of you?
>>ETHAN: Go for it.
>>SPEAKER: So Manal, I want to ask about like we spoke about the Taliban and the greatest minds of the past and so on, and like after the
Taliban left were forced out of power in most of Afghanistan at least, shortly after Abdul Rahman ironic name given that when he apostatized
basically the government which was supposed to be moderate post-Taliban government basically when it came down on him and threatened him
with death for his apostasy --
>>MANAL: Uh-huh.
>>SPEAKER: -- which is -- I'm pointing to Hadid and you know basically the mainstream, the Hanbali, Shafi'I, Maliki and Hanafi schools
which were the greatest minds of the past that came up with this thing about apostasy pretty much agreeing that apostasy equals death. So
I'm just wondering what would be a solution to this sort of thing if not just out and out secularism, state secularism, what would be your speed dial
if you have a solution to this sort of thing? Intisar, hi. I would like to ask you about the public thing about Sharia law and specifically like for example,
sex outside marriage [Indiscernible] and like for example, the United Arab Emirates and other countries have criminal penalties for this sort of
thing as well as homosexuality and apostasy along with that. This is also kind of agreed by pretty much the majority Sunni and Shia
murtabb. So I'm just wondering like are they fabricating this or are they -- I mean is this like actually based in Islamic jurisprudence or not?
And Ethan --
>>ETHAN: Oh do I get one too?
>>SPEAKER: Yeah. Like about the reason we're having this event is at least part of it seems to be because of the emerging conversation
about anti-Muslim bigotry and so on. I'm just wondering to focus on Islamic law in particular as opposed to just like Muslims as a group which
may or may not follow Islamic law. Many of them don't. So why for example, giving rising anti-Semitism, would one of the appropriate
responses be to have a talk on rabbinical law for example. So just wondering like about the rationale for this. Thank you.
>>ETHAN: Thanks.
>>INTISAR: You take them in order?
>>ETHAN: Yeah sure, let's go for it.
>>MANAL: True I mean to answer Ethan's question cause I'm good at answering other people's question I mean the polling shows the
amount of state that buys into Sharia. I mean it's -- I say it's unfortunate cause then I'll answer Intisar's question before answering mine. Which
is that I truly, truly believe that religion shouldn't be part of state. Like that's something that I really come to the conclusion again 20 years in the field
and stuff, so. And I don't like the term secular because there is a secular fundamentalism out there as well as a religious fundamentalism. But
you do need to separate and there needs to be I believe the rule of law needs to be higher. But the traction comes through Sharia. Again, moral
authority what are you actually going to hold, UN resolution 1325 or a verse from the Koran, what's going to actually create change? And I can't wait
for her sexuality question so we can put it on Cross Red Lines. But the question that you bring is something that I feel very strongly about
particularly the apostate laws. And this is more a symbol of transition than it is of Islamic government, Muslim government and stuff.
You're in transition where vacuum is a power and what tends to happen is the pendulum starts to swing back and forth before you really begin to
find a middle. But what is absolutely essential that I have not seen before and I really didn't think I would witness in my lifetime came out of Sheikh
Bayyah who is one of the predominant Sunni leaders in Morocco. And he created something called -- not him, it was a wide range of scholars
but they did something called the Marrakesh Declaration. And in the Marrakesh Declaration it explicitly not only cites Koran but talks and it's a
first time you're shifting duty bearer; right? You're shifting duty bearer from the State to the majority and he's saying Muslim majority countries have
an absolute responsibility to protect minorities. So that's an essential document. Now what I was very happy and what we pushed for was that
includes apostates. So it's not just the Yazidis, it's not just Christians, we're pushing for people who choose not to have a faith to be part of that
protection process and they actually did include it. So I would really highly encourage you if this is something you're interested in, look or you can
e-mail me or you know Tweet at me and I'll send you the Marrakesh Declaration. Because it is something that's quite extensive and coming from
the highest Islamic leadership.
>>INTISAR: So you asked -- you asked me questions that are the big questions; right? What about Islamic criminal law, hudud laws where
there is the death penalty for apostasy or punishments, dire punishments for women who commit adultery and men who commit adultery
that Muslims say is stoning, where there's hand amputation for theft, where there's corporal punishment for other kinds of crimes on the
books and how does this go along with this idea that Islam isn't per se draconian and violent and problematic? So I actually wrote a book about
that and I want to give you the shortest [Laughter] possible version. But I mean this is something that I told you in the beginning that I was sort of
obsessed with the idea of criminal law and you know how do you take the awesome power of a state or of a community and you know, face one
person who is accused of having done something wrong and take away their life or their liberty or limb, what justifies that and how might one do it.
And for that reason in American law you've heard of the rule of you can't convict anyone unless the facts are proven beyond a reasonable doubt. So
it turns out that in Islamic law there is a robust doctrine of doubt that procedurally mitigated or ameliorated some of the harsh sentences that did
come. So those are in the books of Islamic law that you do these things that are seen as moral wrongs in Islam or in the Islamic context and the
associated punishment expresses the moral opprobrium of those acts. There is an expressive function to criminal law and in my
view of my reading of history and thousands of documents over the course of time from the 8th century to the 16th century, what I actually find is
that there is a beyond a reasonable doubt burden of proof, there was a rule of lenity saying if there was any ambiguity in the law, there was
justification, there is excuse that mitigates those punishments in practice such that keeping them on the books serves as a expressive function of
outlining a moral opprobrium to the acts but does not translate into implementing those rules at least historically. We don't know of a single
instance and I've looked. I've done expert crowd sourcing and asked others, we don't know of a single instance where someone was alleged to
have committed adultery that four witnesses were available and seen as credible to say that that person committed adultery and should be
punished by death which is not in the Koran by the way. This is something that we believe to have come from Jewish law or surrounding near
Eastern norms but has never in the Koran the death for adultery. But there is never a single instance where anyone was put to death from
some witnesses proving that someone had committed this crime. So that to me is powerful evidence of sort of a give and take or a play. It's a
feature of the Islamic law criminal system that it does set forth some moral norms. One would be hard pressed to try to make a case that
Islamically, you know sexual freedom was always there. So I will not say that or sexual freedoms in the ways that we conceive of it now in Western,
liberal American or European context. But as to what to do about that and as to whether that should translate into corporal, physical
punishment, those are two different things and it often didn't translate in that way. And now knowing that we can then have a conversation
about what the proper role of the State is in fashioning its criminal law. I mean we have the death penalty here for certain crimes which I'm
fundamentally opposed to and would like to have a continuing conversation about how we can get rid of that. We should have the same
conversation in the Islamic context I believe.
>>ETHAN: So thank you also for the question of why this conversation, why now, how did we get here. And I'm going to give you two different
answers to that. The first is opportunism. I bump into Intisar every 3 months walking through central and we say we should really hang out, we
should really do something together.
>>INTISAR: We're hanging out.
>>ETHAN: We end up much more often on conference calls talking about Sharia Source than we do actually seeing each other. So I
wanted to bring her over here and once we started having that conversation we realized that we want to have a broader conversation. So
that's the simple pedestrian reason for it. Here's my sort of deeper reason for it. I'm really interested in problems that have a technical
component but are primary techno-social problems. And I think you've seen in my work to whatever extent you sort of paid attention to it that
I'm often looking for how do we make a technological intervention but how do we understand a much broader social context so we
have a chance of having success. The reason I got involved with Sharia Source and the reason that I know Intisar and we started working
together was I felt like even more so than Judaism in the United States, Islam is deeply misunderstood. It's deeply misunderstood in part
because it tends to get demonized. It's deeply understood in part because it is so richly multifaceted. And that whether we're looking at
the Islam of someone who's just immigrated from Bangladesh versus the Islam from someone who's coming from generations of African
American Muslims, we might be dealing with very, very different things. So I'm really interested and frankly, skeptical of Intisar's notion that we
can fix some of these problems of how Islam is seen through this information intervention of essentially saying hey, let me tell you what is
actually going on in Sharia law instead of where these debates are. And so I wanted to sort of take what for me is this interesting, technological
intervention that is only helpful if we deal with this larger set of techno-social problems. And when I start playing with those techno-social problems I
very quickly bump into I'm guessing some of the things that are questions for you as well. There's a lot of ways in which Islam gets used to justify
practices that I have a very hard time with as a human rights advocate. But I also take really seriously sort Manal's caution on this which is like
whether or not you or I are deeply rooted in religion; I'm not personally. This is an incredibly important foundational way of understanding the
world for the vast majority of the world's 7 billion people. And if I'm going to build solutions for the real world which is what I want to do, I have to
take very seriously people of faith who are looking at these questions of how religious law and religious practice come into play. So that's my
reason behind it. What else we got? Anything online? Well, we got Rahul over here, let's go online -- oh, let's go in the community first and
then we'll go online and then we'll go to Rahul. Please introduce yourself first.
>>SPEAKER: My name is Simi Carger. I'm a fellow at Brickman Center, Brickman Klein Center for [Inaudible] society at Harvard Law School. As
a humorized lawyer who grew up in Iran, I often find myself in a position that I work on like this like techno-social issue and right now to just give you
a concrete example, I'm working with a group of activists and technologists who produced an application to combat domestic abuse and
violence in Iran. So oftentimes I find myself walking between the lines of women, sexuality, rights and technology. In doing so, we are trying
to provide for one, educational resources to women to understand their rights within Sharia law and specifically within the Iranian legal
system. And then to be able to provide support be it like psychological, legal and then more like sort of emergency support I would say. So when
you're dealing with what type of educational resources to provide to these women who are seeking support or just trying to understand their
positions within a relationship or a marriage I personally find it challenging to make them understand, make the audience understand that
not all laws that exist in a specific environment are rooted in Sharia for one. For two, how to make use of the loopholes of the legal system to
their own benefits and thirdly, what the role of technology is this in this whole ecosystem. Because if you want to stop at where the law
stops or whatever resources that are out there, we're not really stimulating critical thinking in these people. So how do we make use of
technology if you have like examples from other environments I would love to hear from that as well in a manner that's like empowering in a true
sense and not necessarily advocating for say, [inaudible] in a country where the majority of the population is Muslim and you don't want to go
beyond certainly --
>>ETHAN: Sure.
>>SPEAKER: -- social political sensitivities as well.
>>ETHAN: Thank you. Manal do you want to take that one on first?
>>MANAL: I'll punt it to Intisar first and then --
>>INTISAR: Sure.
>>ETHAN: It's always wise decision like in general.
>>INTISAR: If they're from the law school then you punt it to me. I was going to say this may be a problem for Ethan since he's the one that deals
with technology. But I'll say before saying that that you know it's a good question and it's a big problem. And I personally don't think technology
itself solves anything but I think it can be used to harness and amplify existing resources in ways that might not otherwise see the light of day. So
that really is the impetus behind Sharia Source and trying to make resources available and accessible that otherwise might not be available
or accessible. And my big caveat there is it's primarily an academic project. And so there also needs to be some translation work done to make
the -- you know, all this diversity we talked about over 1400 years and several countries and something like 1.5 billion people now. That just
ends up looking like a mess if you know there's no person there to mediate or direct or make all of those resources relevant and useful. And so
we also are trying to and are lucky enough to have some support from MacArthur and Lewis Foundations to convert some of these questions
into policy relevant briefs or white papers or something like that and information that can inform media and public conversations here but
perhaps in a context like domestic violence in Iran as well insofar as there may be resources that will to the extent that it's a question of Islamic
law's role in these -- or Islamic law being used falsely to justify domestic abuse, domestic violence. To at least inform that conversation,
take away that sort of false justification by clarifying Islamic law positions which do not to be clear, justify domestic violence. So it's not the
technology itself I think solves the problem but I think people's creative use of technology to access resources and translate it into usefulness
once we know about problems and are keen on addressing them is where we can see the greatest use. And where I hope Sharia Source
can be of some contribution.
>>MANAL: So I think the way I would answer your question maybe not so technically is kind of division side of it. And you know my vision is an
inclusive society with a social contract that really responds to its citizens. I don't care what the form of government is. What I care about is
inclusivity and responsiveness to citizen needs. And for me, Sharia, technology, you know UN resolutions, those are vehicles to the destination.
And so and I think the more you have vehicles the better. So going back to the Yemen campaign, that was the final link. But we had a whole group
of Yemen economists crunch the numbers of what it was doing to the economy. We had health practitioners. So it's not -- you know I would
never advocate come from a religious side this as being one of the arrows. You have a center which is the destination and you use every arrow
to hit that destination. So I tend to use public health, economics, you know again, governance issues, inclusivity and religion. I would never say
this is the only solution. So what are the vehicle and what are the -- and I would put technology as a vehicle. I wouldn't put it as a destination. So
what are the vehicles versus what are the destination is I think an important part of it. And oftentimes, and it's for legitimate reasons. Most
organizations stopped using religion because a lot of the humanitarian organizations were missionary. And so for very legitimate reasons
people began afraid of religion because they didn't want to be proselytizing. But then we went again, the pendulum is swinging. We went to the
other extremers where we stopped including religion as one of the stakeholders, so just basic stakeholder analysis. You know again, the moral
authority. So I take it very much as one of many issues. And sometimes -- a lot of times I've had to negotiate release of girls for honor killings. And
if you're tribal, religion means nothing. Like you have to get the head of the tribe to agree. So sometimes religion is just, it won't work in certain
areas. And you know again, Tripoli is different than Benghazi, you know Cairo is different than Sinai. You know like even within a certain area in
the region it's not even the cities are different. So you have to really just be you know again, look at it through multiple drivers. Just like there are
multiple drivers of conflict, there are multiple solutions.
>>ETHAN: I will jump in on this one just for the fun of the sort of technical piece of this which is when we think about information technologies at
least when we think about the web, when we think about the mobile phone, there's a very limited thing that these things do. It's just that that
one thing is very, very powerful. These are really good tools for matching people with information for publishing and sharing information and for
matching people with other people. That's it. Like there's really not much else. It's just that those three things happen to be so big that you
can build a giant chunk of your economy out of them and you can also figure out how to apply that to a very wide range of problems. The trick
is most problems worth solving aren't solved by providing a missing piece of information, by allowing someone to express their voice or by
hooking people up together. You can do amazing things but you almost always have to do that within a much larger context and that larger
context might be passing laws. It might be building a social movement. It might be changing the nature of the economy. It might be trying to
figure out how to shape and change social norms. So I'm completely on board with this question of how do people who want to make
social change put more arrows in their toolkit. My other job when I'm not here is working for Open Society Foundation which is the largest human
rights foundation in the world. And my main job there is to try to help them figure out how technology becomes an arrow in the quiver. I will
tell you the arrow that we are the least good at using is religion. We're terrible at it. We're basically an organization of self-loathing Jews.
So we're very, very bad at sort of bringing that to the table. So collaboration is where we look and sort of say how do we reach out to faith leaders.
How is that productively something that we add into the broader work that we're doing? It's something that I'm fascinated by not very good at
yet trying to figure out sort of where to go with. Should we go online for some comments or do we want to stay here? Is there good stuff
Jeanine?
>>JEANINE: It's not for me to say what's good. I'm Jeanine Liberty. I'm with the Media Lab's communication's team and speaking on behalf of
Twitter and Facebook right now. We have one from a Jonick Cabanis, I'm sure I'm mispronouncing that. How do you view future of
gender equality in the Islamic geography but also in the migratory world?
>>INTISAR: What was the last?
>>JEANINE: The future of gender equality in the Islamic geography but also in the migratory world?
>>INTISAR: In the migrant?
>>JEANINE: Migratory world, sorry I have a cold.
>>INTISAR: Oh, I give the migratory world, okay so I give this to you.
>>MANAL: So I'm not sure I understand the term Islamic geography is that like --
>>INTISAR: Maybe Muslim worlds?
>>MANAL: -- majority countries? Yeah. I think again, that's why I founded Safina Fellowship you know we have red lines. And part of it is gender.
Part of it is LGTBQ, part of it is you know premarital sex -- these are real issues that even secular women will say don't cross that line
because it delegitimizes other things. And so people say is this a battle that you want to choose? And in my mind a lot of women are
stepping forward and saying -- and it's not just women. Women and men are stepping forward and saying absolutely because of the canary in
the mine. The gender issues and the women issues are very important red flags. And I think more and more -- I thought when I started Cross
Red Lines I was going to get overwhelming pushback. I got overwhelming support including from religious scholars who were saying we're so
glad you're doing it cause we don't want to do it. But it needs to be -- we need to talk. What do we do with the gay community? What do we do with
women who are opting out of Islam because they feel it's so strict? We don't want to lose them but we also don't know how to reconcile these issues
with Islamic law so at least a dialogue is a first step. And I didn't think that that would be the case. So I do think there is positive movement. I
think the rise of religious extremism and I use religious not Islamic because I think you're seeing a rise of religious extremism. You know I gave
Burma as an example, Central African Republic as another example; it's Christian militias that are leading the violence. So you're really seeing
religion coming back as a tool for extremism really is pushing this conversation and women are the key to unlocking it. So I always tell people
it's not nice, it's necessary. And going back to some of the generals, they'll be like as soon as we secure this country, we'll come back and talk
to you about your women. And my response to them and religious leaders is the same, you won't secure the country, you won't progress until you
talk about our women.
>>ETHAN: Intisar anything to add on that?
>>INTISAR: No. She covered --
>>ETHAN: I think Manal just you know --
>>INTISAR: -- yeah.
>>ETHAN: Yeah, we're going to leave that one there. Let's hand it over to Rahul I think we have time for about one or two more questions and
then we got to let people head off to the rest of their days.
>>SPEAKER: Sure. My name is Rahul Bhargava and I'm a research scientist under Ethan in the Center for Civic Media. So I want to
go back to this question of sort of how we can think about a larger context. And I appreciate your comments on sort of the popular conception with
Islam and Sharia. And I'm wondering when we see analogues -- so for instance, look at women and technology as sort of a something that's a
challenge certainly in Western culture, we start to see like popular placement in media. You know, you see Daniel Tiger's mother on a TV show
being a programmer. You see the movie "Hidden Figures" coming out. What are the efforts being made to highlight these stories of the role of
Muslims in the history of the United States and in that narrative? And in addition to Sharia Source as one of the opportunities to get the word out
there, what are other efforts you see being made? Are they going like informational? Are they going popular media? Like what are some of
these interventions that are happening that you see or that you wish would happen?
>>ETHAN: And just to give a little bit of context on this; right? We have a hypothesis in our lab that this is a particularly tough moment in time to
make change through law. And that this is a moment in time where you probably have more success making change through norms. And
that if you get the norms right, there's a good chance that you're going to get the law right in the long run. And that we're actually very lucky in the
US that you know, the laws for the most part, you know we can find details on this. But the first thing that I would change around Islam in the US
is not how Islam is treated under the law, it's a set of norms around it. So I think Rahul's question basically says great, we're starting to realize
there's places where we have bad norms-based problems around groups that we don't understand and misrepresent. What's the
cultural response? What's the cultural intervention in this space?
>>INTISAR: Yeah, I think it's a great question and one that I'll be speaking a little out of turn what's it about because I don't even watch TV but I did
once. And the things like -- this is going to be another bad example but the Huxtables, I mean that now Bill Cosby has had his faults. But
Huxtables you know did wonders in terms of presenting a nice, wholesome with its own problems a Black, middle-class family in New
York that I think helped shift attitudes in the ways the much more relevant examples that you brought up do. And I don't know, I don't know if
you watch anymore TV than I do, but I don't know what efforts, what particular efforts there are. I know there are -- they're hip-hop artists. There
are some novels; I don't know that there are many or I haven't read them. I think there should be more cultural production TV and movies and
that sort of thing. So I'll just say I'm 100% with you there. I'm not the one to do it. I will stay in my wheel house and focus on the laws
[Laughter].
But I am a full norms supporter over here at Harvard Law School.
>>MANAL: And I completely agree. In fact, I've seen laws change and nothing happens on the ground. So I completely agree with the
hypothesis. I think that -- so you know a few years ago I wasn't much of -- like I just happened to be Muslim. I'm a conflict resolution specialist.
I'm an economist by training and I happened -- I'm an Arab Arabist. I happened to have actually studied the region. So it just happened as a
footnote that I'm also Muslim and when the hostility increased I felt the need to actually step forward and do more to talk about my role as a
Muslim and particularly as not a strict Muslim. And probably -- it's a wide spectrum. I think it's really important that we're always acknowledging
that there's a wide spectrum. I mean like my sister doesn't cover and she doesn't fast. And she's very proud to be Muslim. So there's a very
wide spectrum and what Muslim identity actually looks like and you're beginning to finally see that I think. You're really -- when I wrote my book about
my time in Iraq working with women, I was very specific about like I kept telling my editor I want Wilma Walmart to read this. I don't want with no
offense, Intisar Rabb to read it. I don't want someone who is an academic who understands the region who understands Islam. I want Kelly
Kmart to be like oh, I never knew this. And so that was kind of the targeting and I think you're beginning to see more authors take that
approach. Cause at one point we were stuck in the academic circles which we didn't even have access to before Edward Said either. So like it
was a shift. You have the book that just got released by Imani Muslimgirl.net which is really wonderful. Published by Simon and Shuster.
She's a DJ who covered some young woman millennial DJ on MTV. I mean that's mind boggling. People when they see her keep telling
me are you sure she's really Muslim? Is this like a joke? People can't comprehend how diverse we are. You know you have "Little House on the
Prairie" which was a sitcom on CBS on Canadian broadcasting which is kind of the Huxtables of the Muslim world. You know, very clever, very funny.
She's actually now writing a comedy about ISIS. It had to be done.
[Laughter].
You had to look at it from a different lens. So you are seeing more Muslim comedians. I think that's a huge shift. Cause you know, I think humor is
just a universal way of addressing the difficult conversations and so you see a lot of Muslim comedians now emerging. So there's definitely
an emergence of pop culture. I think one of the things that going back to the beginning, I think one of the things that's important is that we're not
sugar coating. I think it's really important that we're showing our problems. You know, people always say come on Manal, you hang our dirty
laundry too much in public. So my response is like clean it. I won't hang it up anymore if you clean it. And so I think we need to find that
balance of stop being self-critical. But this is where other communities come into point. I'm a huge believer in protection. You know my initial
background is humanitarian. And so for us to be questioning as Muslim communities whether it's in America or globally there needs to be other
actors stepping forward that are saying back off, this isn't helpful, this isn't right, this is actually a hate speech. This is actually what led us to a lot
of the genocides globally. We need to check ourselves before we check the Muslims.
>>INTISAR: And one slight footnote --
>>ETHAN: Please do.
>>INTISAR: -- I'd add to that is she was talking I was just thinking about the great legacy of sports --
>>MANAL: Absolutely.
>>INTISAR: -- as well and all of the Muslim athletes. I had mentioned Muhammad Ali before, you mentioned Kareem Abdul-jabbar I think.
>>ETHAN: [Inaudible].
>>INTISAR: No, you'll go with that. No, but there are others who you know, they excel at these sports and when you ask them about it, they very
proudly say that they're Muslim. And then sometimes issues may come up about why they're protesting certain things or why they might
you know take certain stances or like the NFL players who were fasting during Ramadan. So I guess this point is to say that there is -- I do see
some cultural production or representation in terms of norms that the larger American community understands. But then I would think
that it's a symbiosis too because then there will be questions and they're not the ones, the comedians and the sports -- you know the
athletes that are excelling you know, don't want to also have to go write a dissertation about the Islamic laws behind their norms. And since
they're not well understood I think there's some room for playing both ends.
>>ETHAN: I will give a ludicrous story since I didn't manage to give a Kareem Abdul-jabbar reference but I will refer to my favorite sumo
wrestler competing in Japan at the moment who is Osuno Horashi who is the first African, the first Egyptian, the first Arab and the first Muslim
competing in the highest division of sumo. What's been really interesting about this was that his breakthrough tournament was during
Ramadan during which he was fasting as well as fighting 15 bouts over the course of 15 days.
>>INTISAR: Wow.
>>ETHAN: What was really amazing was the way in which Japanese sumo which it's hard to think of anymore tradition than sort of high bound
institution than sumo where you live together in the same stable and eat the common meals and this was shocking within the Japanese
community. But they started making his meals without pork.
>>INTISAR: Wow.
>>ETHAN: They started making chankonabe which is the stew that everyone eats and he gets fish. And this was like shockwaves through this
community. But it was the Japanese sumo society essentially saying look, we're open. This is an international sport. We're going to find ways
to accommodate. He has now ended up being this fascinating ambassador for Islam within Japan which is a country that does not have a big
Islamic presence. So there is this possibility of not just sort of constructing culture, but almost the sort of insertion of hey, I'm here and let me tell
you about who I am within the context in which I'm going. And since we don't finish on sumo in Japan, can we get one last question? Please
let's go over here to Marietta.
>>SPEAKER: Hi, thank you. So I am wondering how you navigate maybe not necessarily in situations such as this one you know or ones in
which you know people might have more context or you know you might have more time, more -- but how do you navigate the intersection of you
know because the human mind does love to dichotomize and sort of say like you know either you're taking this position or you're taking that
position, how do you -- how do you navigate situations in which your identity as a woman and your identity as a Muslim appear to other people
to be in conflict and you have a hard time sort of explaining that. Do you know what I'm trying to say?
>>MANAL: I absolutely do. Yeah.
>>SPEAKER: Right. Okay, so I --
>>ETHAN: Cool. So let's take it as a last question cause I think it's an absolutely terrific question. It's one that lets me shut up since I
don't have to resolve either part of it.
>>MANAL: Intisar.
>>INTISAR: In some ways it's a easy question to answer in that with me it's sort of what you see is what you get. But it's also I'm a walking
contradiction for anyone who has prejudices about what Black women should be like, about what Muslim women should be like, about for that
matter what law professors should look like. And just being me in my environments and expressing the scholarship really and the ideas and ideals
and opinions that I have and exchanging with my colleagues or other people outside of these contexts that I interact with I find to be enriching.
And I suspect or what I see is that the people that I speak with often I don't know, are surprised if they came with priors that suggested to them that
I shouldn't be me. And then there's this old saying that you put three law professors in a room you'll get four different answers. So I'm
never really concerned with sort of boiling things down or allowing dichotomies. I always think it's more complicated and I will push the point and
make it more complex so that we can have a robust exchange. And I think that's how learning and growth happen.
>>MANAL: I would agree. I mean I think everyone kept telling me how wonderful that my 40's were going to be. I'm happy to report it is
pretty awesome and part of it is because you realize everyone is a walking contradiction. There's no one who doesn't have those
contradictions. And I'm a peace activist but I have to brief the Pentagon. I'm Arab and Muslim and then when you talk about two identities, like my
southern identity like automatically I find myself defending the South. I'm like what am I doing? So like it just happens in different forms in
different ways. And so like my answer to you is I don't. I really began to realize it's other people's issues, it's no longer mine. And so if you see a
contradiction, deal with it. If you think I'm not a perfect -- I get like so many pushback about how I practice; you need to deal with it. It's not my
issue. So I'd really learn to distinguish what's mine and what's others. And so if it's not mine, I don't need to sort through it. You need to sort
through it.
>>ETHAN: I can't think of a better way to end this. Let's give a round of applause to thank our wonderful guests.
[Applause].
>>INTISAR: Thank you all.
>>MANAL: Thank you.
>>ETHAN: Thank you all for being here and giving us great attention and great questions. Thank you so much for our crew for sharing this
with everyone else who's been able to tune in. And I hope you come join us again soon for ML Talks.
>>INTISAR: Great. Thank you this was so great.
>>ETHAN: It was wonderful.