Harmonizing Religion and Human Rights (Dec. 5, 2018)

I am Karen Ryan the Carter Center senior adviser for human rights and special representative on women and girls and it's my pleasure to welcome you to tonight's conversation at the Carter Center harmonizing religion and human rights thank you so much for joining us tonight we've got a great program for you and only 75 minutes to get it all in so I'm going to skip the long introductions I hope you don't mind the program has all the details about our wonderful panelists but I'll just tell you that on our far right on my far right your left is Imam Omar saw them on of the yakeen Institute for Islamic research we welcome you and next to him is the rabbi Jill Jacobs of trua the Rabbinical call for human rights we welcome you and the man next to me obviously needs no introduction former President Jimmy Carter [Applause] well before I delve into the topics let me remind you to silence your phone I'm going to do it I'm going to lead by example everything off you are free to keep your phones out and tweet and share on social media during the the conversation and please use the hashtag faith and human rights you can also submit your questions for the panel via Twitter or if you're here in the audience with us there will be cards handed out and as long as you hand them to our staff by 7:40 they'll be collected cards and we'll try to get in as many questions as we can toward the end of the program so let's get started 70 years ago on December 10th that's next Monday the newly formed United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights inspired by texts of major world religions recognizing the equal dignity of every human being tonight we will explore contemporary challenges for the universal pursuit of human rights through the lens of faith religious faith can be a source of Solace and joy motive motivating us to work for the betterment of ourselves our families our communities and our nations and the world at large but religion has also become more polarized over the last 15 years with extremist groups in many faiths becoming more emboldened in our secular democracy we treasure and protect the separation of church and state but we cannot ignore the influence of religion and religious arguments and movements in our country and in the wider world we will explore both personal faith as well as public expressions of our faith through commitments to improve our world so I'm going to start with a question for our panelists on personal faith if you could each please speak about the connection between your personal religious faith and your work on behalf of human rights and I'd like to start with you President Carter if you could begin by reflecting on an idea that you addressed in your book I'm not plugging but yes I am faith a journey for all it's a marvelous book if you don't have it you must get it you you address faith what is faith in that book well I worship the Prince of Peace Jesus Christ I'm a Christian and I wrote the book about faith because we have so many different kinds of prevailing faced in our life we have faith in ourselves we have faith in each other we have faith in things like democracy or freedom or tomorrow or human rights we have faith in equality we have faith in welcoming immigrants we have faith in the basic principles of law of our country we have faith in and they I'd say they combined teachings of all the major religions Hebraic Hebrew isn't he Hebrew he is a man and and Christianity and and in others Islam and so I think that only one time in history have we ever done together as human beings and said why don't we try to resolve the world's problems and that was right after the Second World War when 60 million people almost were killed we had the horrible Holocaust that let the nazis assassinate many Jews I think about six million Jews so in compensation for that and to prevent that happening again we organized in United Nations to try to preserve peace and we organized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights we wrote that three years later in order to make sure that everybody was treated equally African Americans and and white people Jews and Christians and others and we also tried to make equal rights between men and women and equal rights I would say in the treatment by government of people who had a disparity in in income the poor protected from the very rich and they people of color in imprisonment think of all kinds if you read the Human Rights the 38 paragraphs in human rights declaration there was passed on 10th of December you'll see that it was basically designed to to guarantee equality of treatment by one another and also by governments to compensate for for disparities in treatment so so that's the essence of human rights I think thank you first of all thank you to President Carter and thank you to Karen for hosting this conversation here it's really a privilege to be here for me my Judaism is what drives my commitment to work for human rights I direct an organization trua that mobilizes more than 2,000 rabbis in the US and Canada to work for human rights to bring a moral rabbinic voice to human rights both here at home and also in Israel in the occupied territories and we do that out of the depth of our Judaism out of the depth of our Jewish history and texts and tradition the very first thing that the Bible tells us about human beings is were created in the image of God that's a very first thing that we learn about ourselves and that means that any injury to a human being is effectively an injury to God and any attack on a human being is an assault on God when the rabbi's start talking about what this idea of tell'em Elohim creation and the divine image means they in the in the Talmud and other rabbinic literature they have this idea that actually when you damage a human being or god forbid when you kill a human being you're diminishing God in the world and that's unfortunately what we're doing all the time in our world in every place in every but it's not enough to say that we as human beings as creations in the image of God deserve not to be attacked deserve to be treated the way that we would treat and respect God we also have obligations because it's very nice to say nothing bad should happen to me or to any of us but somebody has to be responsible for making sure that that is true and so Judaism has the idea of cleave of obligation which means that we have obligations both toward God and then also toward one another and the the rabbi's again in later books of law create whole systems of trying to figure out how to create a just society in which everybody has a decent chance of living a dignified and a successful life a lot of times when people think about Jewish law they think about ritual law what you can eat what you can't eat what you do on on Shabbat on the Sabbath what you don't do but actually there's whole areas of Jewish law that deal with every single aspect of what we would now call human rights whether it's the relationship between workers and employers whether it's questions of criminal justice all these very live issues of human rights are are debated and discussed and there are many many attempts to figure out how we can ensure that everybody lives in a just society so that's the first piece for me and then a second I want to say a word about history Judaism has a very long several thousands of years of history which for us we're always living in the present moment history is not something that happened in the past it's very much alive in my community and in our history of course the core narrative of the Torah is a story of the oppression in Egypt slavery in Egypt and the liberation from slavery what's interesting about what happens after the Jewish people experienced liberation is that God gives a series of laws many of which have to do with interpersonal behavior and some of which have to do with the responsibility toward the gare toward the stranger the Sojourner somebody was not from our community but is living among us it would be very easy to imagine a situation in which the people said okay we just got out of a situation of being oppressed by another people we were strangers in this land and so forget everybody else we're just gonna protect ourselves but actually that's the very moment that God says no now that you have experienced oppression you have to be hyper aware of those who are vulnerable in your own community and then finally the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as President Carter said was one of the world's responses to the Holocaust and to World War two and it was the world's attempt at saying that what happened to my community what happened to others shouldn't happen again this is aspirational we have not yet fulfilled the hopes of that declaration but it really is a sacred document it's the world coming together and saying this is what we aspire to this is what we hope that every nation will live up to and for from my organization in particular we look to that declaration as a core Jewish document of our time a modern Jewish text because it was a large part response to our own tragic experience and because the experience of our history tells us that that history now imposes obligations that we have to take that document forward so I mean with the personal story in particular a lot of my work reflects in my own personal journey and trying to struggle not just with faith will it overall identity the Institute that European Institute for Islamic research focuses on inspiring contribution through conviction it sort of pushes back on this idea that the more devout you are as a Muslim the more dangerous you are to your society but more in the Platonic conception which is that the more devout you are as a Muslim the more beneficial you are to humanity and that a conflicted American Muslim identity isn't good for anybody and a lot of times as we struggle and I think we'll get to our political polarization there's this idea that we have to accept either a certain definition of American to be American Muslims aver a very narrow definition which sets a different threshold for patriotism for us as American Muslims or you know that that my Muslim has to be lowercase so you got to relinquish a core a part of your identity because Society has derived certain conclusions about Islam on the basis of hate mongering and on the basis of a very targeted campaign that's been particularly vicious after 9/11 so you have to accept those conclusions and relinquish those elements of your faith rather than stick to them growing up it was conflict our entire lives my parents were both you know uprooted they they're from Palestine my mother and father actually met at U of H at the University of Houston so they both had their journeys to Texas where I live right now but I'm not a Texan I'll get to that in a moment just as a qualification there my parents met at U of H they both had very unique journeys but they both really had to fight and to struggle to exist because they had no homeland or their homeland was taken from them they had no family to connect to they had no one to support them in their education my dad literally had the story of showing up on a bus in Houston and getting a graveyard shift at 7-eleven not speaking a word of English and now he's a distinguished professor in chemistry at a HBCU and you know they they embodied struggle and being able to overcome any obstacle and then my mother you know may God have mercy on her soul struggled with a lot of personal issues in terms of health you know cancer and the likes and I saw faith power them through that and not only did it power them through their unique struggles it made them more loving to each other it made them more loving to us and it made them better people to humanity and so they were able to overcome any struggle or obstacle that came their way so the personal side of this I mean you know growing up we had a story of a struggle we had a story of witnessing you know my dad through David Duke out of a mosque way back then it's nice to see him resurface Terrell but that's another story maybe we get to later on we had a story of our parents giving away our car to Somali refugees coming home and finding refugees from Bosnia wielding a hammer for Habitat for Humanity that was our story growing up and what that speaks to in the faith in particular in Islam which sort of ties my work in is in conviction contribution is that God describes faith as a tree in the plant and he says that its roots are firm and its branches are high in the sky and it's in constant production of fruit what that means is that if faith is rooted deeply in the heart the greater awareness you have of God the greater awareness you have of the humanity that's around you and if you are you know in the Quran if you're standing there's a there verses about standing up and praying at night every time God talks about prayer at night he immediately connects it to charity and the day and what that speaks to is that if you're paying attention to God when other people are not then you're paying attention to people when other people are not and your branches being high in the sky provide shade to humanity what drew me to that was that constant connection the coherence of understanding the oneness of God and the oneness of humanity the fullness of the Abrahamic tradition in that sense God describes the Prophet Abraham peace be upon him in the Quran as a nation of good that he was an entire it was as if he was a nation because of the good that came out of that one man God describes Jesus Christ peace be upon him in the Quran or quotes him rather what jihad animo Baba can ænima Quintette he made me blessed wherever I may be and that he carried with him goodness wherever he was he changed and transformed wherever he was and finally the description of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him as Muhammad indeed I mean as a mercy to all of the world's and so what drew me to that was that constant connection being made an Islam having a very explicit anti-racism tradition that drew in the Malcolm X's of the world I did a class on the 40 Hadees 40 sayings of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him on social justice and when I covered things like environmental justice or animal rights or human rights or whatever it may be I never had to struggle to find an explicit text if anything I had to narrow it down the it was so explicit it is so explicit in the divine revelation that everything around you is assigned a god-given presence and it's not even spoken about in terms of rights but a god-given sanctity and you have to honor that which God honored thank you so much those were beautiful reflections of you and now I would really like to take the personal and bring it into our public expressions of our commitments to human rights really you know our country is deeply polarized at this time in politics but as well as religion you know and the question really is how can we stand firmly for human rights at this time relying on our faith as a source of authority and moral courage but also to bring others with us in community because do any of us doubt that if the armies of believers were to decide that we would have just immigration reform a just peace in Israel Palestine an end to the war in Yemen universal health care for all that we would have it if the armies of believers would reach deep in all of our faith traditions something tells me we could mobilize for those things so that's my question how do we with our faith and bringing others of our faith into this this campaign for human rights how do we do that how can we do that well we have you know certain principles that got us that never change my high school principal used to say we must accommodate changing times pre-clean the principles that never change so I think every individual in here and in our country and in the world has certain principles that we cling to that we choose ourselves some of us emphasize truth some of us emphasize benevolence some of us in emphasized equality some of us emphasize democracy and freedoms some of us in a sighs religious faith as such and belief in God but we all choose a certain number of those things and that's what we believe in I would say that our country which is supposed to be a nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all has quite often fallen down on that premise we have in recent times at least I say in the last 15 years or more departed from some of those principles he used to guide us along with other countries that were basic principles on which the Universal Declaration was founded human rights we adopted a policy of Oh being okay to torture people and we dis about the Geneva Conventions we began to spy on Americans and and do away with some of their privacy I won't go to detail about that but we also have seen a tremendous increase well since I left public office we've had a seven and a half times increase in the number of people in prison we have more people in prison now than any other country on earth and and a lot of that is because the poor people that are in prison or either either that Bay is poor or the African American or the Hispanic or they are mentally or mentally have some mentally mental affliction these kind of things are very troublesome we've also determined lately that the truth is no longer a measuring of a human being and it's no longer to be Friday we've turned against treating immigrants as and welcome guests in our country if they come in Legally and things of that kind so so we have we've we've gone a long way towards violating some of our basic principles and and those presence I think are based on both democracy and freedom and the principle of the United States of America and on any particular religion that we that we have I would be bold enough to say that all of us here on the stage are children of Abraham when I was at Camp David with pagan and Sadat all of us were deeply religious begging was part of the first prime minister in Israel it was deeply religious and Sadat had a brown spot on his boric way it spent his his into our life bowing down in prayer with us with his part on the ground and and I think that one reason we were able to reach an agreement there was because all of us had the same basic faith as children of Abraham so we have so much in common and I think that what the universal declaration of human rights has done is kind of encapsulate those and some very simple paragraphs there very quickly you could read the whole thirty paragraphs in 15 five minutes but but they sure said that the basic principle is to treat each other as equals or not and not as superior people so I think that's that's the basic things out - one is religious faith the other one is face then in certain secular principles like democracy and freedom it's more polarized certainly than I've seen in my lifetime and we think about politics people usually immediately think about everything that they don't like about politics whether it's the nasty campaigning or whether it's a kind of politics where you're really just screaming slogans at each other and the thing about human rights is it should be apolitical it should be nonpartisan and it should be based on values and morality and that should be able to cut through particular political positions we should be able to agree for example that everybody should have health care that everybody should be able to make a basic living then we can argue about what the details are but the goal is for us to agree on those basic principles and then figure it out from there we're not there yet but that that is the goal and in our conversations I think that it's important to speak from a values perspective and religion certainly can help with that that when we speak from religious tax from our religious traditions in my experience certainly people listen and are able to have conversations that they can't have when the conversation or so-called conversation is just about screaming political slogans and as we all know the the power of personal experience and encounters with other people there's no parallel to that right now where much of our politics is driven by so much fear and by a sense of scarcity that if somebody else succeeds then that must mean that I'm failing that as opposed to thinking about all of us moving forward together and we know of course that when people in our communities have experiences with others who don't look like them who don't pray like them who maybe don't have the same first language that suddenly they're talking to a human being and we've seen this particularly in the last few years around the issue of immigration now of course there are still many people in this country who want to seal the borders and not let anybody in we've also seen so many attempts to reach out and try to understand the experiences of people who are coming here as immigrants so we've seen a true we've seen more than 70 synagogues that have decided to become sanctuaries that they've committed to protecting immigrants who are at risk of deportation and that's that's brand-new we've seen the responses to the horrible images of children and families being tear gassed at the border that suddenly people who look at those pictures it's not just the theory of immigration or big questions about what comprehensive immigration reform looks like it's a mother with a baby in her arms and it's hard to look away from that and I think that some of those images and even better conversations and relationships that are developing within communities particularly within faith communities because so many faith communities have stepped up either as sanctuaries as taking in refugees working with immigrants and refugees in their own communities that those relationships can break through much of the rhetoric you mentioned Authority and I think that the separation of church and state as a discussion required discussion and of itself but there's a saying from dr. Martin Luther King jr. that the church is not meant to be the master nor the servant of the state but its conscience not it's meant to be its guide and it's critic not its tool and so the church obviously by extension religion what role does religion play in regards to authority and I think by Authority we can also extend that also with political candidates not just people that are already in office not to become tools of politicians whether they are in office or whether they are in candidates but rather the integrity of religion well when you talk about Authority and you talk about morality and you talk about where society stands morality requires a strong definition and it requires a place in society and religion plays a role in defining what's moral in society but religion has to maintain credibility by not being so blatantly hypocritical so there is a there is a role you know power if power does not have the check of morality then it becomes tyranny if freedom does not have the check of morality it risks becoming depravity so it has a role to play I think that when you talk about the role of religion and power and that independence and religion with political candidates and defining a more comprehensive morality if we are to say that we have timeless principles principles that can resist temporary shifts of power principles that can resist temporary shifts and societal trends truly timeless principles what does that look like in resisting becoming as polarized as our politics has become now there has been an erosion of the religious middle it's not just the political middle there has been an erosion of the religious middle because essentially because religion has become so politicized you have to make a choice if you want to stay in your church stay in your synagogue stay in your mosque you have to make a choice and that choice is usually going to be highly partisan so how do we push back on some of those things well for one where there is universal good I think that religion can help us set ourselves apart in terms of the zeal that we bring to working for that Universal good so people that that rely on faith that draw from a reservoir of deep faith work in accordance with that faith in ways that are in ways that are unique in ways that are particularly energetic so we you know I don't think that dr. Martin Luther King jr. would have achieved what he achieved had he not been a person of deep faith I don't think that Malcolm X would have achieved what he achieved had he not been a person of deep faith I think that mother Teresa set herself apart because of her faith or she drew from a place of faith I think a person is not as well known but abdul Sattar Edhi in pakistan set himself apart drawing from a place of faith in his humanitarian work so where there is good universal good you set yourself apart by drawing from that reservoir where there is evil you set yourself apart where it's a clear evil and in fighting that evil I don't think Mohammed Ali would have stood up the way that he stood up had he not had a place of faith that he could draw from and then where there's ambiguity where there is ambiguity we have to maintain consistency if we resist the temptation to become drawn into a particular political platform and be values-based then when we talk about morality we can bring a moral perspective to both how the child in the womb was treated as well as the child in the cage at the border we can bring a moral perspective to both pornography and poverty we can talk about these things that are so divisive and we can bring that consistency and not shy away from offering a comprehensive and consistent answer if we are consistent on where we stand on something like torture or war or militarism we are not going to we're not simply going to speak out on those issues when the president the particular president that's in power is someone we don't like immigration has been a broken system for a long time we've had a militarism issue for a long time so we've had a torture issue for a long time we still have not resolved Guantanamo Bay the images of in Iraq still never had a true a true form of reparation so where's the morality on that and and how do we actually maintain a consistency across administrations and across issues and say we're drawing from timeless principles no matter what issue we are discussing and they all fall in accordance with the dignity of a human being and how a human being should be honored that's a perfect segue to what we'd like to bring this back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the idea that the this set of principles was as President Carter said is one of these moments in human history that we can be so proud of where we said these the state will do and not do the state will not torture it will respect freedom of expression these are commitments they're very specific it also includes a right to an adequate standard of living water sanity housing etc so these are very specific commitments that were made in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and then again in 1993 at the Vienna World Conference on human rights by you know many more governments then were there in 1948 with the declaration so this is a consensus among governments yet we are so far away so here on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights you know since World War two we have to ask we're here in America this is our country we're all here we're in this struggle together you know and the US and the past has influenced the the establishment and the enhancement of global norms it was Eleanor Roosevelt who represented the United States in the negotiation of the UDHR you know it's it's we have a strong tradition here in fact the the UDHR was a lot of it was based on the American Bill of Rights so we should have great pride in that document so you know now with this erosion of human rights both at home and abroad what do we really need to do to get ourselves in our country back on track when I say back on track it's not like human rights was great before 9/11 but after 9/11 it was like we were really trying very hard there were improvements that were coming about we were committing to end torture we were committing to bring about equality of women and men we were and the end of indefinite detention and all of these terrible abuses and then after 9/11 it was like a graph was going up and then 9/11 happened and respect for human rights went precipitously down and now governments around the world have followed the American lead torture is back we even had a journalist brutally murdered inside a consulate in Assad the Saudi consulate in Istanbul almost just unimaginable a few years ago that this could be countenanced so how do we get back let me say not to where it was perfect before but back to an upward trajectory where we were increasingly seeing progress on human rights President Carter do you have any ideas what can we do how can we get back on this track well I think I began my rambling remarks tonight by saying that I've worked at the Prince of Peace I think the essence of it is peace is a basic human right and the United States says has been by far the most warlike country in the world since the Second World War we've been in active combat against it at least 30 countries and since the 9/11 we've been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan now for 17 years I think it's along its last wars we used to invoice in about four years no matter how battled it the better day they affected people but we used to get them over right now they just go on and on so I was I think that one of the main things to remember there is that our government wouldn't go to war and stay there unless these people basically supported them so we need to make sure we implement our basic religious faith in a posing war it has a direct adverse impact on the well-being of people for instance China hasn't been since 1979 and China has 14,000 miles of high-speed railroad finish we don't have a single mile China's building new universes every year we very seldom have started a new University from scratch that was functional they have all of their bridges and highways in good shape I'm not bragging over China in particular but I'm just saying it that to avoid war China has been able to take trillions of dollars that we've spent saying in just Iraq and Afghanistan and spin it on their their own people's needs in just I say four or five years China will do away with the extreme poverty in the whole country that's something we don't not even there I think half the people in the United States are now in poverty according to the you know World Bank figures on definitions so I think if we could just commit ourselves as our nation to implement the teachings of Jesus Christ and not go to war and not fight each other that would get open the door to a lot of improvements in basic human rights as far as you know the rights of women the rights for poor people the rights of those in prison and so forth so that would be my single contribution I'd I've been learning a lot by listening to the other two well maybe I'll start with what you just said about freedom for from fear because as we know when people are afraid they're very very willing to sacrifice other people's human rights and civil liberties and that's what we've seen after 9/11 and and right now that much of the response to immigrants to refugees is coming from this place of fear so we need to figure out how to break through that which is not easy but I think it's important that we have a discourse of human rights all the time not only when things are really bad as you said they're human rights were not perfect under the last administration or under any administration before that but now people are paying more attention and if there's a silver lining it's that people are paying more attention I'll say also that 70 years in the scope of human history is not actually a very long time so we might look back and say how come we haven't achieved this beautiful vision of the universal declaration of human rights in the last 70 years well I come from a tradition where we're mourning the destruction of a temple almost 2,000 years ago as though it happened yesterday so 70 years is like a minute it's nothing and so we shouldn't give up after 70 years we should give it at least another 2,000 or so see how things go so we but we certainly can't give up and the final thing that I'll say is that when I started as executive director of trua and I would say to people we work on human rights issues both in the US and Canada and also in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories people would say okay Israel I get but what human rights issues are there in the United States or Canada because a lot of the issues that were on people's minds many people would would classify as social and economic issues social justice issues but not necessarily human rights issues because often we think of human rights issues as Geneva Convention issues as issues that have to do with with war which of course those issues have always been live in the United States certainly in in the past that's it 18 years almost 17 years but that's it feels very far away most of us aren't grappling with those aren't seeing what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan every day and so we don't think of what's happening in the United States sometimes as human rights issues but we have to talk about the human rights crises at home and talk about what's happening here as human rights issues and also connect it to what's happening the rest of the world and that's something else that perhaps is a silver lining right now as we're seeing seeing the rise of autocrats as we're seeing the attacks and democracy around the world we can recognize that it's the exact same playbook that's being used here that's being used by Putin that's being used by Orban that's being used by Netanyahu all these leaders who are attacking human rights and democracy in their own countries and we have to recognize that we can first of all we can learn from people who are standing up for human rights in different places and second that we have to address these issues as a worldwide crisis and not just in a vacuum in our own countries I think I'd like to address it from a another perspective you know I speaking from a very unique vantage point which is being you know from the Muslim world because every Muslim represents all 1.8 billion of us and our accents everything we do you know which really plays out bad with mass shootings in the country because you get like 380 of them and then one of them is a Muslim and we're gonna be good for one or two idiots a year that's gonna just you know taint the entirety of our body around the world but I'd like to just speak to about you know in this particular regard how we deal with the rest of the world when we talk about bridges of understanding we've spoken about polarization in our politics in regards to the national scene people becoming more isolated and allowing for media and politicians to color the world around them and the polarization has reached a level to which that means your neighbor who you never talk to now right so coloring the world around you through these things and I want to speak to that element because if we can't even get our neighbors right how are we going to get people across the world that are some existential threat to our way of life in our civilization right and human rights discourse in particular I think can become problematic in being weaponized for imperialistic and capitalistic games and I don't talk about that for a moment a document is important a document at the end of the day is hostage to those who interpret it and those who implement it and so if the United Nations is hostage to those who fund it or hostage you know to a veto to an American veto then it becomes only a branch of American internationalism and that's deeply problematic because selectively applying human rights discourse is you know is very unfair it leads to the constant polarization not just of Democrat from Republican we're talking about from west from the east right you know polarizing these two worlds and giving in to this idea that there's this clash of civilization that exists out there how we push back on that is very important I think it's it's important for us to understand that using human rights discourse to continue to feed into this idea that one part of the world is regressive backwards in need of taming in need of our saviors to go out there and to free them and that's why we're gonna put trillions of dollars into the Iraq war oops no weapons of mass destruction but guess what now they have movie theaters so they might have lost hundreds of thousands of people but we freed them freedom in the language of self-determination is being lost and that's actually in the history of the UN Charter looking at the Atlantic Charter a few years before that which emphasised self-determination I think really spoke to something obviously evolved and became part of broader discourse but this idea of self-determination this idea of a people being able to define themselves and sometimes when we try to tame the world we strip national communities faith communities people of agency because we project our notions upon them that have very flawed underpinnings but not the same realities as us so I think you know what President Carter wrote in the aftermath of the Iraq war in 2003 I thought was very powerful he said you said President Carter that the Iraq war didn't meet your threshold as a Christian for a just war now to the American mind too often because freedom to us is restricted to expression as opposed to self-determination which is really what a lot of people are seeking in different parts of the world and sometimes are suffocated by dictators that we back and that we allow to suffocate those legitimate calls for self-determination a lot of times to us we justify some of the harm and the damage that we caused in different parts of the world and that's part of the moral contents of the state we have to be willing to tell our country the truth that we have to do a better job we can't we cannot we cannot absolve ourselves of our own human rights violations we can't talk about freedom when we have the largest incarcerated population in the world without owning up to that we cannot talk about self-determination or freedom in the language of self-determination when we back dictators and shut down people's legitimate aspirations and then use expression and you know this idea that well we have to save them as as a justification for war and that in particular you know that this idea that we can forgive and overlook our own violations at times because we can say well at least look you know this guy is championing freedom because he opened up movie theaters and guess what they're playing The Avengers now yeah but he's also acting like the villain off of the Avengers and torturing political opponents and where's the human rights discussion and that so being more wholesome is important and understanding building bridges of understanding let's make a better effort to understand the world around us to understand their lifestyles to understand to give them the agency to explain themselves to us as opposed to always portraying them in a certain way that makes it forgivable when we destroy their economic and political infrastructures while we could be spending that money at home at home on health care and on clean water in Flint Michigan and President Carter mentioned about half of the country living in poverty there's a new definition or a new expanded report that's been championed by the Poor People's Campaign that raises the number of people in poverty from what was 3040 million to a hundred and forty million people in the United States when you and slightly enlarged the definition to put people who are just a paycheck just barely away from homelessness and total destitution 140 million people in our own country so yes this and is didn't it wasn't it Christ that says what you do to the least of these you have done into me right I mean so I know President Carter you have said many times that if you are a Christian you have to take care of the poor you know I and I think this is a struggle in our system in our society that we we cherish capitalism so we're going to have to reconcile the ideas around freedom what is freedom mean when it comes down to it and that is challenging in this discussion because it has been much abused the idea of freedom and what we are allowed to do to to pursue it just one last question before we go to question and answers you know a few years ago President Carter you raised the issue of women's rights as one of the most serious and unaddressed human rights violations through the motion the most the most yes not one of the most the most and we haven't discussed that tonight but half of the world a half of the world are deprived and we see it with me to movement and so many others that preceded it to to address it yet another book for you to seek out and President Carter wrote a call to action women religion violence and power and in here you you talk about that you know and women are a key to peace as well we write about that in here when women are included in decision making from the family to the community to the glue to the world we will see more peace can we all just talk for a couple of minutes about how we can really advance this idea of women's equality zina Anwar once said if women are equal in the eyes of God why are they not equal in the eyes of men do you have any well the Bible says that in in the eyes of God there is no difference of freedom men and women there's no difference between Jews and Gentiles there's no difference between slaves and masters and that just emphasizes a at least a New Testament commitment to equality of all people and I think that the ones that Jesus championed were they deprives people the ones who had leprosy that once he were crippled the ones who couldn't see the ones who were despised by society and he emphasized the fact that all people are equal in ours of God and he included women as well I still believe that that every country on Earth including the United States severely discriminates against women and girls for instance we support slavery in this country slavery now probably exceeds in monetary value and human suffering what it did during the 17th and 18th 19th early 19th century and Atlanta is one of the one of the exchange points for human slavery one reason is that we have the largest airport on earth for passengers and about 80 percent of the passes brought in against their will and to be a scientist slavery conditions and in prostitution and other things or women 80 percent of women and whose fault it especially the bins fault you know when when women are condemned for prostitution you see it's the brothel owners and the pimps and the customers who make it possible when women are accused of promoting abortion because they had to have you know and into a termination of a pregnancy that's this dangerous to the woman or the result of rape or slavery or incest men are the ones who caused it but but women always get their fault for it and as you pointed out you know I think it's no doubt that that men are the basic originators of almost all the wars in the world not every one of them passed but I can't think of any exceptions to that so so so you know here we blame women for their problem and one of the basic problems that we've discussed before is a fact that it's men who interpret the meaning of the holy scriptures in the Old Testament and the New Testament in the Hebrew Bible and also in the Christian Bible the misinterpretation of certain verses deliberately introduced to accommodate men's beliefs of what caused women's to be to be deprived of basic principles because people could say well if a Bible says so and so it's okay to make a wife subservient to a husband or it's okay to exclude women from the priesthood and things of this kind so I think that that's some of the things that we need to be worrying about is is we could do away with the discrimination against women and and in in the fact that that about a third of a women in America are subject to sexual abuse of some kind and about a fourth or fifth of the women who enter College are sexual abuse before they graduate and and this is this is a blight on our our country and and women don't have as much pay or anything and I think what 5% of something of the of a largest corporations in America have women as CEOs you know whether this is competent as men so it's a burning issue and and it should be in the forefront of people's minds including everybody here by the way I heard a headline in there that women's rights is a man's issue it's a man's you agree with that because women women are now speaking aloud a little bit more than they used to before I've heard others say that and I think it's so well said because there would be no unwanted pregnancy if there wasn't so but yet yet the woman is there holding the burden yes maybe we could solve the abortion issue if we asked our fellow men to take responsibility for unwanted pregnancy there's an action item okay rabbi Jacobs Thank You President Carter I so appreciate your phrasing and your insistence that women's issues are the human rights issue of our time and I couldn't agree more and first of all when we talk about women's issues sometimes people think about issues that are put in that category of women's issues whether it's reproductive health abortion violence against women which are clearly crucial issues but actually there's a gender lens on every human rights issue so in my organization's work we work for example on incarceration and women who are experiencing incarceration have a different set of issues in addition to the issues that men are experiencing and slavery and trafficking of course there are men and women who experience slavery and trafficking in our country and beyond but there are particular experiences especially around sexual violence are different and we could go on and on for every issue there is a particular gender lens that we need to put on it the second piece is that yes of course women's rights are our men's issue also for many reasons but also because we if we lose 50 percent of the voices in the world and that's 50 percent of the wisdom that's 50 percent of the teaching that we could be learning from so that's a loss for all of us and certainly when we think about the sphere of religion that for so many years we had men as you said interpreting religious texts in one particular way and now thankfully we have women who are also religious leaders and teachers and academics I for one am very grateful that that door was opened I think about it there's a very famous story in the Talmud in which a particular head of the Beit Midrash of the study hall had certain requirements for who is allowed to enter and not pretty strict requirements and then a new head came along and opened it up so anybody could come in now by anybody it was still men but still in context but so it said that they had to put out hundreds and hundreds of extra benches that day because the place was full and it said on that day some of the hardest questions were answered that couldn't have been answered before so just imagine now that you brought in hundreds more benches for the other half of the people who were previously excluded and now perhaps we can solve everything that we've been struggling with so that's still something that we have to keep working on bringing in all of those voices so the the attitude towards people I think first and foremost many of these things are regional not religious you don't really find a great variation between the way that a woman is treated in a neighboring country in a particular region that has similar political and economic conditions but I think reshaping the attitude towards people there's a very I had the blessing of co-authoring of paper with a few of my colleagues called gender equity and the advent of Islam and in the title was actually I was a subtitle gender equity in the advent of Islam and the title was we used to have no regard for women whatsoever and it was actually a saying of of Omar the guy named after who's the second caliph of Islam he said that we used to have no regard for women whatsoever until God said about them what he said about them and decreed for them what he decreed for them and what he meant by that is our entire attitude towards how we viewed women how we viewed our mothers our spouses our daughters of course in that time and 7 century Arabia people used to bury their daughters alive and that was one of the first things that the Quran spoke out against because a girl was deemed as being inherently of less value to her family and to her society so uplifting and elevating the human spirit and the sanctity of the human there's a verse in the Quran which I think could be a nice note for us too to kind of end off with on these on these things but it says yeah you know sin kanakam indica and one fellow people we have created you male and female nations and tribes Lita autofill so that you may get to know one another and verily the most noble of you in the sight of God is the most pious so what that meant was piety which is the true standard of nobility in the sight of God could be attained by anyone despite their gender despite their race so there's the condition and how we view the woman as a whole and that's something that Islam emphasized shifting the attitude towards women since we don't have too much time to get into the specific rights and and really just speaking to the legitimate grievances that women have had I think that education is something that we should emphasize and when we talk about women's role in education in both learning and district the distribution of knowledge I don't know if you all know this but the first University in the world was founded by a Muslim woman and Muslim women's scholarship started with the wives of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him it was in Islam at least the idea of a female scholar teaching learning teaching having just as as great of a right or obligation and a right to learn that started off very early on and so you know I hate to break this to you all but the Imam thing doesn't really exist so we kind of just make it and now it's sort of like when I said I'm not a texting but I kind of am a text and I'm born in Louisiana but I'm still a Texan in a way the Imam in Islamic tradition we don't really have a true clergy class we have scholars and we have laypeople and if the scholars are endowed with some sort of position by state their judges their coffees the Imam is the person who leads the prayer all right so it could literally be if a group of people right now went out and started praying the amount would be the one leading the prayer but we use the term Imam means leader obviously to make it analogous but really you have scholars and laypeople a great scholar and I'll end with this amount of the hubby who was a thirteenth century wrote a book compiling the biographies of 10,000 Muslim women scholars over less than a thousand years and actually there's a scholar from Oxford University arc Ramona Dewey who compiled biographies was translating that wealth of biographies and so when you you allow for both men and women to have equal access and knowledge and learning the tradition and interpreting that was something that was enshrined early on in our faith tradition then a lot of those discussions do not have to be revisionist you know 500 600 700 years later because women have been boxed out and also mentioned this we have yet to have a female president in the United States of America and don't easier which is the largest Muslim country in the world not not an arab country surprise surprise again it's not your fault we don't blame you President Carter for that one but that's just to say that we've I think we've we've grossly misinterpreted the status of women in Islam and that's part of that Orientalism that has peddled a certain notion of how women are viewed in the Islamic tradition you know I think the most surprising and enthusiastic group that we've had to work with around the world on a women's rights has been the old moms the moms in West Africa and throughout Africa and Kerry kid didn't maybe take two or three minutes to testify about how many of them are so enthusiastic about heaven explained from the Koran how women should be treated equally and fairly and and this has been a very wonderful delight for us and also very gratifying for us in that right two or three minutes I'll just say that okay it's it's really inspiring that when people see how their how their faith and in this case the Quran aligns and they look at it and they say this is human rights they become apostles and evangelists for that for human rights and this is happening in Nigeria and Ghana can read about it on our website that we have found and we hope to do more with Christian communities and and Jewish communities and others to align Human Rights per se with faith tradition because it is very much culture it's not reveille it's not from the text itself it's culture so helping to bridge those gaps is very very much part of our work thank you sir so I we only have about 15 minutes for questions and we do want to get some in and I wanted to pick up over on your Imam Omar on your last point earlier when you were talking about the weaponization of human rights so the question then is how and this is for for each of you if you want to I'll get it okay that's all right how can we balance between human rights and our interests our national interests economic military to be maintained to what extent must the superpowers intervene in a context where huge human rights violations take place especially what if this context is in the case of an ally like maybe you could add several countries in there so Imam Omar but also President Carter I'd like to know how do you balance this is sometimes tricky I'll let you go first for change I've never been in charge of the country so I'm never been tossed with balancing out the interests you know I think just the the you know and I'd love to hear from President Carter what moral leadership looks like at the state level you know as a person that's on the outside of government it's very easy for me to point to double standards and to speak to the need for moral consistency whether we're talking about torture immigration or mass incarceration or whatever or poverty or whatever that may be I will say this I mean if if it's not you know in the case of Human Rights discourse in particular the way that it has been weaponized has fed into this notion that we have already mastered it and so you know that's what I'm saying we've got to be honest with our own issues and we have to be willing to look in the mirror and take ourselves to task and say well you know what makes us great as a nation what can we what you know I found it very ironic you know that the Iraq war was called freedom how do you free a nation when you destroy everything about its infrastructure but and when we say they hate us for our freedom really what freedom are we hated for our freedom are we hated because we impede on the freedom of others and the true meaning of self-determination and the right to come into the fullness of themselves so when we say mutual interests mutual respect mutual interests does that mean as long as your interest aligns with or doesn't undermine our projects international projects then we'll let you have your aspirations otherwise we're just gonna let you win these few battles and we're going to continue to say we are the moral police of the world I think that it's important for us as Americans to say that we love our country and that doesn't that's not to the exclusion of the world so my being an American does not exclude me from being a global citizen just as my being a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew does not exclude me from being an American I will love my country and try to advance my country in regards you know in ways that will truly make it better but not conflate patriotism with nationalism and not do so to the utter neglect of the world and say that well we have to protect our borders and that's why we can morally reason with this idea of dehumanizing people so where we can either bomb them fund the bombings of innocent children and weddings or in and bus school buses or even worse cage them at our border so I think that's how we have to we have to reckon with their own cognitive dissonance and do so very publicly as American citizens and say we reject this idea of American exceptionalism we believe that the entire world needs to do better and here's how we're going to try to make our country better and by extension our world better well you know almost all the wars we've been in for a long time have been unnecessary including I think Iraq and Afghanistan and Yemen and maybe even Vietnam and career I was I was in the Navy on a submarine during the Korean War and I and I tried very desperately after that to bring a healing process to to career I've been a number of times and and when I made a my inaugural speech I I promised to preserve the peace and and to promote human rights and I tried to you know was successful in doing that but but I had a lot of chances as president to begin a war and I and I would say in retrospect that had I begun a major war I would like to be have been reelected because you know there's a lot of difference between an embattled civilian president and the commander in chief in charge about troops overseas who are dying every day because I because you caused it and so forth we don't admit that but anyway it's a very difficult choice to make but I think that the American people have got to be committed to the principles of peace and human rights and because when we give tacit approval to a leader who goes to war unnecessarily like we've done so many times I just mentioned a few of them I think that's wrong and we need to correct that problem if it has to come from over then our our countries so I think I think if you let me have one more minute I think our country has within our genes I'll say and included all three of us a kind of a self correcting capability because we our ancestors all came here at different times mine came early and maybe also later but uh and we came with a spirit of adventure ISM and entrepreneurship we were able to to try new things in a courageous way to come to a different country and sort of new life and and we were successful when we got here by using own initiative and over a long period of time going back to what what the rabbi's said you know we look at things in seventy years instead of two thousand and seventy years well you know we always finally have corrected our major mistakes in America it took us a long time to do where we slavery took a long time to get women's rights a boat and and and it's you know ii us a long time to do other things but we've always been successful eventually and maybe that's because we have kind of an urgent within our genes to correct our mistakes sometimes it takes too long i have to admit that but uh but that's that's one of his salvation solving saving things about americans that we eventually come out right and and we we with our Constitution originally that all we said men all people I equal created equal and we have the rights that we've prescribed in our Bill of Rights and so forth that was a wonderful signal to the rest of the world that's that's ancient times but but I think we still have a ingrained in us and so maybe for a long period of time will be correcting it my son school lessons this month about Isaiah and Jeremiah when when Israeli Israelites were in captivity in Babylon and they were finally punished saved by by an Iranian here's a matter of fact in the sixty years or two generations but you know I think that what I try to say to my son yes we have problems now in the world a lot of them caused by the United States but if you wait long enough we're going to correct them and I have faith in the future and hope well that's a very optimistic I think we should end with that but before we do because I we wanted some optimism right some uh but before I do I wanted to draw your all of your attention to a new publication by the human rights program today on the anniversary of the 70th declar 70th anniversary of the Declaration we've published this scripturally annotated Universal Declaration of Human Rights each article is accompanied by biblical text and commentary it does not provide any definitive analysis but it hopes to encourage people of faith Christians mainly but it's both the Old Testament and the New Testament to explore conversations and to initiate discussions and we have gifts for each of you of this new publication but we hope you in the audience here and online will look for it on the Carter centers website and the the final there's a question but it's really just a request is there a common prayer of unity that we can use for attaining the peace in our daily work for human understanding and compassion so I'd ask each of you to think of a prayer of unity and I guess I'll start with the Baha'i prayer very brief for America that was revealed in 1912 by Abdul Baha a central figure of our faith who was a lifetime prisoner of the Ottoman Empire but came here in 1912 he said Oh God let this American democracy become glorious in spiritual degrees even as it has aspired to Material degrees confirm this revered nation to up raise the standard of the oneness of humanity to promulgate the most great peace to become thereby most glorious and praiseworthy among all the nations of the world I'll start based on on what you offered I don't think that there's one prayer that we can or that we should all say there's something that's very valuable in our diversity in our different faith traditions and when we try to have one prayer that all the different faith traditions can can say what ends up happening is we take out everything that makes each of our traditions special and so I believe that we should each pray in our own way out of our own traditions and I'll just offer because you offered this this Baha'i prayer Jewish communities have for a very very long time been offering prayers for the leader of whatever government we're living under and we pray that that this person there's different versions of this prayer but basically we're praying that this leader whether it's a president or a king or Prime Minister whoever it is that they are gonna do what is right and what is just and there are many conversations in many Jewish communities when the new administration started about how we would go about saying this prayer when we didn't have that faith that this was an administration that would actually carry out justice and in those conversations what many of us talked about was the fact that we've said this prayer or version of it under some of the cruelest Kings under czars under lots and lots of people who had no interest in injustice and mercy in peace and yet we keep praying at we keep praying that that they actually will find some enlightenment and of course it's not enough to pray we also have to be doing the work every single day and so we need to keep we need to keep saying that prayer whoever our leaders are in every moment and then continue to also do the work so that we're not just relying on those leaders to do the right thing do you have do you want to share it amongst text oh one of the things we might pray for is the United States be a true superpower not based on our military power and based on our economic influence or even our political influence but based on the fact that we were champions of human rights in Champions of Peace and second of all of the environment and champion of equality among people and champion of welcoming foreigners to our shores those are the kind of things that we ought to be the champion of in the eyes of the world and I would like for everybody on earth to say when they have a conflict in that country why don't we go to Washington and see how they preserve the peace or if we have a problem with human rights and they have a an abuse in their country why don't we say have him say why don't we go to Washington see how they deal with human rights we'd like to do the same thing oh why don't we protect the environment the way Washington does that's what I'd like to see how it comes should be a champion of human rights and I think that's a good prayer at least for me you know there's one I was going through all the prayers in my mind off there are many beautiful scriptures and prayers that could fit the entirety of the Abrahamic scope and by by anyone who believes in and and a creator god there's one prayer that I think speaks to something that we've all been hinting not hinting at but speaking about which is that a recognition that our decisions are very consequential especially when we have positions of power whether they're political places of power or whether they're pulpits places of influence they're places of power and they're places that have that have great consequence and each one of us has to recognize that that our places carry great weights of responsibility and the consequences have led to a lot of a lot of people and and and hardship man-made create a disaster and that's true whether I'm dealing with a Syrian refugee or someone that's in the streets of Dallas or someone that's in a warehouse and and in at the border so one prayer that's very special to me it's short but it's very comprehensive the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him used to say Oh God I asked you for the ability to do good the ability to leave off evil and for the love of the poor so the you know the love of the poor the love of the exploited the love of the oppressed if there's anything that we can do when we're talking about humanizing people I think that each one of us needs to reach deeply within ourselves and then do our part to acquaint ourselves with those that are suffering due to the various and justices that we seek to combat with our different places of influence so I ask God that he allow us to do good leave off evil and that he place within us the love of the poor thank you well that's all the time we have tonight I hope you'll watch the webcast for our next conversation the delicate art of conflict resolution because we need peace right yeah this will take place March 15th March 14th excuse me 2019 and you'll find more details online my thanks to all of you for being with us tonight and please join me in a round of applause for our panel [Applause]

Channel: The Carter Center

Views: 678,321

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Keywords: The Carter Center, Jimmy Carter, Rosalynn Carter, Peace, Health, Human Rights, Carter Center, religion human rights, universal declaration of human rights, karin ryan, rabbi jill jacobs, imam omar suleiman

Id: pRR6ZcK1zaY

Length: 77min 41sec (4661 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 14 2018

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[u/Tariq_7]

Please check Sheikh Omar's first intervention on this panel discussion last month @ minute 12:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRR6ZcK1zaY

(77 minutes)

December brings the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a United Nations document that lays out an individual’s inalienable rights.

To mark the occasion, a panel of religious leaders will explore what the scriptures of some of the world’s major religions have to say about human rights.

How can we align religious life with human rights?

What role should spiritual leaders play in promoting human rights?

And what can everyday people of faith do to defend human rights and encourage mutual respect between people of different religions?

Moderator: - Karin Ryan, Carter Center senior advisor on human rights and special representative on women and girls

Panelists:

• Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter

• Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director of T'ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights

• Imam Omar Suleiman, founder and president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research