CSID bi-Weekly E-news: March 18, 2004
Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy
www.islam-democracy.org (in English)
http://www.islam-democracy.org/ar/ (in Arabic)
CONTENTS:
1) TOMORROW: IJTIHAD: Reinterpreting Islamic
Principles for the 21st Century.
2) CSID is looking for NEW office Space
3) Mourning Fern Holland
4) The democrat (article on Iranian Scholar
Abdolkarim Soroush)
5) Employment Opportunities (NED, USIP, AID, Human
Rights First)
__________________________________
IJTIHAD: REINTERPRETING ISLAMIC PRINCIPLES FOR THE 21st CENTURY.
TOMORROW’s USIP/CSID workshop on Ijtihad is OVERSUBSCRIBED and seating is no
longer available. However, you can still join us, watch the event LIVE, and even ask questions through the internet from ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.
Please TUNE IN VIA WEBCAST on: www.usip.org
See more info at http://www.usip.org/events/2004/0319_wksislam.html
Tomorrow, FRIDAY, March 19, 2004, from 2-4:30pm on at the Institute (17th andM). Co-hosted with the US Institute for Peace (USIP). How can religious interpretation in Islam be used to address the needs of Muslims in the 21st century? What role can American Muslim leaders and organizations play in promoting a more tolerant, modern, and moderate interpretation of Islam? How can religious differences be resolved without resort to violence or repression?
Featuring:
MUNEER FAREED of Wayne State University, Michigan;
INGRID MATTSON of Hartford Seminary;
HASSAN QAZWINI, Imam in Detroit, Michigan;
MUZAMMIL SIDDIQUI of the Orange Country, CA Islamic Center.
Moderated by RADWAN MASMOUDI, President of CSID and DAVID SMOCK, Director of the
USIP’s Religion and Peacemaking Initiative.
_____________________________
LOOKING FOR OFFICE SPACE IN WASHINGTON DC:
The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) is pleased to announce it
is expanding its headquarters in Washington DC. The rapid growth shows both the
success of CSID and the heightened interest and importance of CSID's mission.
The overwheliming support of individuals like yourself has enabled CSID to
triple its full time staff and to expand its programs.
We are currently seeking an office space in Washington DC that will fulfill the
current needs of CSID and accommodate for future growth.
Please inform us if you know of any locations, within the District of Columbia,
that rent for $28.00 to $31.00 per square foot. We are seeking approximately
1000-1400 square feet of office space.
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
___________________________________
Mourning Fern Holland
Should the United States, and other democratic nations, spend costly resources and even make sacrifices to help the people of Iraq develop democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights? Fern Holland believed so, and she gave her life for this belief.
On March 9, Fern Holland became the first civilian in the U.S. aid and
reconstruction efforts to be killed by the enemies of democracy. She and Robert J. Zangas, another U.S. aid worker, were shot to death together with their Iraqi translator south of Baghdad.
Fern Holland was only 33 years old when she was brutally murdered, but few individuals have done more for the cause of freedom and human rights in Iraq and the Middle East. This dynamic young attorney helped in writing essential provisions for women’s rights in the new Iraqi interim constitution. During a few brief months since American forces liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s regime, Fern Holland labored to make this liberation deep and lasting.
Fern Holland was a friend not only of democracy but also of the authentic faith of Islam. Contrary to the terrorists and thugs of Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party who have tried to hijack a great and humane religion,Fern Holland understood that Muslims’ love for God requires compassion and respect for the rights and dignity of all men and women.
Between tours of service in Iraq, she visited Washington last November and attended the Iftaar dinner, during the holy month of Ramadan, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. The theme of the panel discussion that evening was: “The Road to Democracy in Iraq: The Role of Religion in Politics”. Fern’s enthusiasm, her love of other people, and her sincere and genuine devotion and respect for the Iraqi people were on radiant display at the
dinner.
Fern Holland left lucrative work in law firms not once but several times to
serve the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized far from home. She
volunteered for two years in the Peace Corps in Namibia, and ran a legal clinic in Guinea. Finally, she worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Coalition Provisional Authority as a human rights and democracy specialist in Iraq.
During the last six months of her life, Fern Holland corresponded with me every week by e-mail from Hilla, in the south-central region of Iraq. She was passionate in her determination that Iraq can and will become a society devoted to democracy and human rights. She was always urging and inspiring me and my colleagues at the Center to do our best to help the Iraqi people stand up with dignity, and build a modern, democratic, and progressive state that can protect
their rights and inspire Arabs and Muslims around the world.
We could never do enough to satisfy Fern Holland’s zeal for helping the people of Iraq. The constant refrain of her e-mails was: “We need more scholars, books, and teachers over here,” “When will you open an office for the Center in Iraq?” In recent months, she helped set up three training centers (human rights group, women's association and tribal democracy council) in each of the six provinces in South Central Iraq, and was trying to post a democracy teacher/trainer in each one.
Fern Holland dreamed of setting up a Middle Eastern Institute for Democracy in Babylon, that will draw leaders and students from all over the region. In recent weeks, she organized a one-week course on constitutional democracy in Jordan and took 67 Iraqis to participate in it, coordinated the participation of 36 Iraqi (men and women) leaders of newly founded NGO’s in a workshop on Islam
and democracy, and coordinated a campaign that collected 12,000 signatures by the women (and men) of Hilla to request that 40% of the future parliament of Iraq be set-aside for women.
Almighty God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, will embrace this noble woman whose love for long-suffering Muslim victims of tyranny and terror was greater than her love for her own life. She was fervent in her belief and commitment that Iraqis are capable, and desirous, of becoming the first real democracy in the Arab world, and she gave her life to make it happen.
Americans and all civilized nations must persevere to make sure that the seeds that Fern Holland planted bear fruit. The goal of freedom, democracy, and human rights in Iraq and throughout the Muslim world is, as Fern Holland understood, attainable. This cause, that she loved so bravely, will triumph if good men and women, and their governments, invest time, toil, and persistence.
I, and my colleagues at CSID, grieve for this great and sudden loss for Iraq and the cause of democracy everywhere. May God bless Fern Holland.Ameen.
Dr. Radwan A. Masmoudi
Founder and President
Center for the Study of Islam& Democracy
www.islam-democracy.org
________________________________________________
The democrat
Iran's leading reformist intellectual tries to reconcile religious duties and
human rights
By Laura Secor, 3/14/2004
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/03/14/the_democrat/
IF IRAN'S DEMOCRATIC REFORM movement has a house intellectual, it's Abdolkarim Soroush. A small, soft-spoken philosopher with fiercely expressive eyebrows,Soroush specializes in mysticism, Sufi poetry, Islamic theology, chemistry,pharmacology, and the philosophy of science. Although he once worked for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's revolutionary government, he now advances a powerful argument for democracy and human rights -- and he does so drawing not only on John Stuart Mill and John Rawls, but also on the deepest intellectual traditions of Shi'ite Islam. Religion must remain aloof from governance, he is fond of saying, not because religion is false and would corrupt politics, but because religion is true and politics corrupts it.
Soroush's work is heady, abstract stuff. And yet, its hold on throngs of young Iranians -- hundreds of students show up to the typical Soroush lecture -- is so strong that Iran's ruling mullahs consider him a threat, and pro-clerical militias regularly harass and beat him when he speaks in his native land. That's why these days, he makes his home at Princeton University, where he teaches a seminar of fewer than 10 graduate students and passes all but unnoticed through the halls of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy.
That is where I met Soroush on Feb. 23, the day the dismal results of the latest Iranian parliamentary election began trickling out. The Guardian Council, a body of clerics with far-reaching powers, had disqualified some 2,000 candidates,mostly reformists, from so much as running for parliament. Unsurprisingly,though the level of voter turnout and hence the strength of the new parliament's mandate is disputed, the election results were clear: Pro-clerical conservatives packed 156 of the parliament's 290 seats, with 50 still left to be decided.
But the success of the reform movement, says Soroush, will be measured not in parliamentary seats but in attitudinal shifts, as Iran's educated youth embrace such notions as "freedom, justice, political participation, and the rights of man."
"The reform movement actually had two dimensions, if you like, two sides," he explains as we sit in his bare visiting professor's office. "One side was the political. Some of the reformists were part of the establishment, of the government. Now they've lost their power. But on the other hand, the most important part of the reform movement was intellectual, theoretical, educational."
That intellectual reform movement finds expression in Soroush's own work, which attempts to reconcile revelation and reason, religious duties and human rights.Whether or not such a reconciliation is possible is the subject of much debate and experimentation in the Muslim world today. But perhaps no one has attempted to develop so ambitious and unique a philosophical framework for that project as Abdolkarim Soroush.
Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution seemed to herald a new era for the Muslim world.In place of the secular, corrupt, repressive government of the American-backed Shah, Iranians imagined they would create something entirely new: a regime that would promote social justice and spiritual fulfillment, and one that would draw on indigenous cultural traditions and the theory of the state embedded in the country's overwhelmingly dominant faith, Islam.
The charismatic Ayatollah Khomeini, who had suffered prison and exile under the Shah, would replace a crass, alien capitalism with a dignified, indigenous spiritualism that rejected worldly motives. As Khomeini admonished the people,the purpose of the revolution was not "to have less expensive melons" but to lead a more elevated life.
In the end, however, Khomeini saddled Iran with something not all his supporters bargained for: the doctrine of velayat-i-faqi, or the rule of the jurist. This doctrine effectively delivered autocratic executive powers to Iran's clerics, and particularly to the ayatollah deemed wisest by his peers -- in the first instance, Khomeini himself.
Initially, Soroush believed in the democratic and spiritual promise of the
revolution. Born Husayn Haj Farajullah Dabbagh to a lower-middle-class,
religious family in Tehran in 1945, Soroush studied religion and science side by side. He went to Britain in 1973 to pursue an advanced degree in analytical chemistry, followed by a course of study on the history and philosophy of science. During this time, he began publishing philosophical papers in Iran under the pen name Abdolkarim Soroush.
In 1980, scant months after revolutionary forces had closed Iran's universities,Khomeini invited Soroush to return to Iran as a member of a committee of seven scholars who would revise the country's higher education curriculum. At first Soroush was enthusiastic, working with his colleagues to develop courses that would educate students about their Islamic heritage and traditions. But as the revolutionary government exerted increasingly dogmatic control over the committee's work, Soroush soured on the project. He didn't approve of separating
men and women in the classroom, forcing rituals on students, restricting the subjects professors could teach, or marginalizing the sciences or social sciences.
"I was a little bit more liberal-minded than some of the others," Soroush tells me. Feeling isolated -- "There were no ears to listen to me," he says -- he resigned in 1983, never again to work for the government. Instead, he would become its critic. "Undemocratic things were growing in the whole country," Soroush says of the post-revolutionary period.
In `92, Soroush established the Faculty of History and Philosophy of Science. It
was Iran's first program of its kind. At the same time, his philosophical
writings on Islam and democracy began to circulate through an eclectic
intellectual journal called Kiyan. In these writings, Soroush directly
challenged the political power of the clerics, even advocating that they cease working for pay so that they would no longer be corrupted by worldly interests."They must remain lovers rather than dealers of religion," he explains in an e-mail. With these and other writings, Soroush became a professor withafollowing.
As Soroush's influence grew, so too did the influence of the defining figure of
the reform movement's political wing: Mohammad Khatami, minister of Islamic
Guidance for 10 years after the Revolution. Advocating constitutional law over
strict religious law and parliamentary rule over clerical rule, Khatami won the
presidency in a landslide in `97.
Soroush, who considers Khatami a friend, believes the president squandered the
hopes reformists had vested in him. "I think he lost some of the best
opportunities for reform in our society," Soroush says. "He was a very, very
powerful man because he had more than 20 million votes." But Khatami was a
cautious ruler, refraining even from criticizing such obvious abuses as the
beating of students and closing down of newspapers, Soroush laments.
In July 2003, Soroush issued an open letter to Khatami in which he pulled no
punches. "The present generation as well as generations to come must never
forget this ominous message of religious despotism," he wrote. "That in Iran
today, the best newspaper is the one that is closed, the best pen is the one
that is broken and the best thinker is the one that is nonexistent."
The slide toward despotism had advanced past the point where Khatami could stop
it, though he might have done so earlier, in Soroush's view. Nevertheless, when
clerics manipulated the recent elections and Khatami again failed to take a
resolute stand, many of the president's supporters came to think that he
"betrayed the whole cause of reform," says Soroush.
But the intellectual reform movement, of which Soroush is an integral part,
lives on. "If people think that even in theory the reformists have failed," he
observes, "that will be the real death of this movement. But I think that will
not happen, because I think the reform movement in theory is much more advanced
and much richer than its rival."
The day I attend Soroush's Princeton seminar, the class is discussing a group of
eighth-century rationalist Islamic philosophers called the Mu'tazilites, whom
Soroush sees as among the precursors of the Iranian reform movement.
The Mu'tazilites, who drew on ancient Greek philosophical sources, believed that
the Qu'ran was a created text, rather than an eternal one -- meaning that it was
situated in the moment of its historical creation and could conceivably have
been different, had external circumstances been different. Most intriguingly,
the Mu'tazilites believed justice did not derive from God but guided God's
actions. Therefore an action was not good or bad because God commanded or
forbade it; God commanded or forbade it because it was good or bad. What this
meant was that morality stood independent of God and in fact inhered in the
actions themselves. It could be apprehended with reason, even by someone
ignorant of God's injunctions. Soroush calls this vision of justice "moral
secularism."
Though the Mu'tazilites produced the official doctrine of the Baghdad caliphate
from 765 through 848, they were unpopular elitists who resorted to violent
repression. When they were displaced by the orthodox Ash'arites, who held reason
to be subservient to revelation, the Mu'tazilites went into near-permanent
eclipse. Sunni Muslims embraced the Ash'arite view and came to see Mu'tazilite
ideas as heretical. But the often subterranean Mu'tazilate influence became
woven into the theology of the Persian Shi'ites and the Yemeni Zaydis.
Soroush's philosophical views owe much to the Mu'tazilite insights he explains
to his graduate seminar, in particular the notion that reason can allow us to
distinguish between good and evil, quite apart from divine revelation. From this
notion of moral secularism follows Soroush's belief that "you can have a
democratic debate about good and bad in politics" -- something implicitly denied
by those who advocate rule by clerics or by the letter of the scriptures.
But while Soroush makes a business of separating the rational from the divine,
he is everywhere clear that his aim is not to diminish the divine but to protect
it. In his seminal Kiyan essay, "The Expansion and Contraction of Religious
Knowledge," Soroush argued that the essence of religion, which is immutable,
eternal, and sacred, can be separated from religious knowledge, which is
mutable, relative, and historical. The implications of this simple theory were
far-reaching. The interpretive work of the clergy, therefore, was not itself
divine; rather, the pursuit of religious knowledge was human and historically
situated. Religious ideology, like religious knowledge, also stood apart from
religion itself as something ephemeral and, in Soroush's view, dispensable.
As Daniel Brumberg writes in "Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in
Iran," it is precisely in separating religious knowledge from the core of
religion that Soroush makes it possible to engage with Western ideas without
invoking the Muslim bugbears of "cultural surrender, cultural superiority, or
mechanistic `borrowing.' " Rather, one can apprehend justice, say, through
reason, and reason can wield tools of worldly -- even of Western -- provenance.
In any case, Soroush argues, contemporary Iran draws on three cultural
wellsprings: Persian, Islamic, and Western.
Soroush believes that religious institutions and political ones should be kept
separate. Doing so will allow religious life to truly flourish, because it will
be chosen rather than imposed. But if this sounds like Western-style liberal
secularism, it isn't. Rather, Soroush envisions what he calls a democratic
religious society. Its goal is the freedom of believers to practice and live by
their faith without compulsion -- but also without the "profanity" that pervades
Western secular life.
Shari'ah law provides the Islamic framework for moral living, and Soroush does
not seem prepared to do away with it, although he is clear that scripture should
never form the sole basis of legislation. Indeed, Soroush sees Shari'ah as a
form of religious knowledge rather than an article of religious faith. And so,
in his view, it should be subject to rational discussion and adjustment.
It is here that my discussion with Soroush becomes most tangled and most
intriguing. Shari'ah law is flexible, he tells me. It can be reinterpreted by
religious scholars who may not feel that its actual provisions -- the stoning of
adulterers, say -- still perform the functions God intended.
But is this not antidemocratic? Unelected, unaccountable jurists are left to
make political decisions based on their interpretation of the divine intent, and
the social expediency, of Qu'ranic injunctions. And what about human rights? I
ask Soroush. The idea of human rights is still alien to Iranian jurists, he
tells me, but when they are better educated that will change: "I am 100 percent
sure that if our clerics become familiar with the ideas of human rights, not
superficially but deeply, philosophically, that definitely this will influence
their interpretation of Shari'ah."
What Soroush would like, then, is for Islamic thought to engage and adapt
secular notions of rights. What he doesn't want, however, is for rights claims
to take precedence over traditional religious morality. He certainly doesn't
wish to see Iranian society become as permissive as American society, where he
believes that human rights claims have unduly silenced religious believers. He
says, "Like even the omnipotent god whose actions are conditioned by the concept
of justice, human rights, though they are universal, must be conditioned by the
idea of morality. I think human rights nowadays has been carried away." While
those who advocate human rights may favor gay rights, for instance, Soroush
believes homosexuality is simply immoral.
It is hard to discern exactly what Soroush means here by morality, but it
certainly doesn't sound like moral secularism. For if, as the Mu'tazilites
claimed, morality is rational, why shouldn't rights be a component of morality,
subject to negotiation but not to unexplained moral censure of certain groups of
rights-seekers? The idea of universality, I come away thinking, is an
uncompromising one, whether it's the secular world's universal human rights or
the religious world's universal power of God. Can there really be an independent
idea of justice that conditions them both, and isn't ultimately founded on the
conviction of one's supremacy over the other?
Certainly, it's a tension that runs through our own society, even if in the end
we resolve it in a manner exactly opposite to Iran. That tension is not lost on
Soroush, an Iranian liberal who laments the lack of power of American religious
conservatives: "I don't have the statistic, but roughly 70 percent of American
people are religious -- they go to church, they are regular churchgoers and
things like that as far as I know. But they do not have the power in order to
say something about homosexuality in this society. Their voice is virtually
unheeded."
Laura Secor, a writer living in New York, is the former staff writer for Ideas.
___________________________________________________
JOB OPPORTUNITIES:
National Endowment for Democracy: http://www.ned.org/employment.html
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is seeking to fill the position of a Program Officer for the Middle East and North Africa.
Duties: The program officer will work with other program officers to develop and manage the Endowment’s grants program, develop the Endowment strategy, set priorities and monitor and evaluate projects in the region. Duties of the Program Officer will include assessing and drafting grant proposals, monitoring existing grants, maintaining contacts with organizations and individuals in the region and traveling to the region, including Iraq, for site visits with grantees.
Qualifications: Applicants should have experience in and knowledge of political,social and intellectual issues in the Middle East, an advanced degree ininternational affairs, political development or another relevant field,excellent writing skills in English, fluent in Arabic and preferably goodcommunication skills in French and. Experience with international NGOs and civic projects, and with living and working in the Middle East desirable.
Qualified candidates should send a resume, a brief writing sample and names of two references to:
Laith Kubba
Senior Program Officer for the Middle East and North Africa
National Endowment for Democracy
1101 15th St, NW, Suite 700
Washington DC 20005-5000
(202) 223 6042 (fax)
[log in to unmask]
United States Institute of Peace: http://www.usip.org/jobs/index.html
Agency for International Development: USAID/General Notice - Update on Non-career Limited Term Foreign Service Appointments
The first of many advertisements has now been posted on our website and on USAJOBS, the Office of Personnel Management's website. Please see following attachment for conditions.
Point of Contact: Any questions concerning this Notice may be directed to Dennis Diamond, M/HR/OD, (202) 712-4456.
SENIOR ASSOCIATE - HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS PROGRAM
Since 1978, Human Rights First (the new name of the Lawyers Committee for Human
Rights) has worked in the U.S. and abroad to create a secure and humane world by
advancing justice, human dignity and respect for the rule of law. We support
human rights activists who fight for basic freedoms and peaceful change at the
local level; protect refugees in flight from persecution and repression; promote
fair economic practices by creating safeguards for workers' rights; and help
build a strong international system of justice and accountability for the worst
human rights crimes. Collaboration, innovation, and the search for lasting
solutions are the hallmarks of our approach to the toughest human rights
problems.
The Human Rights Defenders Program (HRDP) works to promote the work of
independent human rights defenders around the world. It campaigns for the
realization of the right to promote and protect human rights. It intervenes on
behalf of individual defenders suffering persecution for their human rights
activities, as well as working for the creation of enabling legal environments
for human rights defenders in which the basic freedoms essential to human rights
defenders are upheld.
Based in New York, working in coordination with other departments and programs
and under the supervision of the Director of the Human Rights Defenders’
Program, the Senior Associate of the Human Rights Defenders’ Program bears
responsibility for ensuring that Human Rights First continues to play a vital
role in supporting the work of human rights defenders around the world. She or
he will play a lead role in formulating program goals in all areas of the
program’s activities; researching and writing position papers, web-site
materials, op/eds and other press pieces; conducting advocacy; fostering
relationships with NGOs and governments; developing specific projects.
Primary responsibilities will include:
· Work with program directors and staff to identify and respond to
situations where local partner organizations and defenders are targeted for
persecution.
· Maintain and develop relationships with other NGOs, both in the U.S.
and internationally, to ensure effective and timely responses to threats to
human rights defenders as they arise.
· Engage in factual and legal research for defender cases, and work
with program staff to draft appropriate documents – letters, advocacy alerts,
press statements, background analysis documents, and reports.
· Work with staff in Communications and IS departments to develop
material for media distribution and posting on HRF web-site, concerning all
concerns of the Human Rights Defenders’ Program.
· Serve as a focal point for existing, long-term cases and assist
program staff to respond to developments in these cases and pursue further
advocacy.
· Continue to liaise with the UN Special Representative on Human Rights
Defenders and explore new ways to support and develop her mandate.
· Work closely with International Justice Program to develop projects
supportive of human rights defenders engaged in the promotion and implementation
of accountability mechanisms for serious human rights violations, often in
post-conflict situations.
The ideal candidate will have the following qualifications:
· In-depth knowledge of international human rights standards and their
enforcement institutions at the regional and international levels;
· Excellent written and oral communications skills;
· Track record of conducting public advocacy and achieving clearly defined objectives through the use of both legal and non-legal strategies;
· Capacity to work under pressure, to take initiative and to work
collegially with others;
· Ability to work comfortably in a variety of settings, including
legal, academic and governmental, and to achieve a sympathetic rapport with local human rights advocates;
· A law degree, and/or other advanced academic training in human rights, and five years experience in a related field is highly desirable;
· Experience promoting and protecting human rights in diverse
international environments is highly desirable.
· Willingness to travel;
· Fluency in a language other than English, especially Spanish, French or Arabic is strongly desirable.
ANNUAL SALARY:Competitive, Excellent benefits.
START DATE: Immediate Hire
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Respond no later than April 5, 2004.
SUBMISSIONS (E-mail Preferred): Cover letter, resume, 2 Writing Samples (1
unedited); names and contact details for three (3) references to:
HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST
HR- HRDP – Sr. Assoc.
333 Seventh Ave., 13th floor
New York, NY 10001-5004
Or via facsimile to: (212) 845-5299
Or via e-mail to: [log in to unmask]
All applicants will be notified of our receipt of application; only selected
applicants will be contacted for phone or in-person interviews. NO PHONE CALLS,
PLEASE.
Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy
www.islam-democracy.org (in English)
http://www.islam-democracy.org/ar/ (in Arabic)
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