A Discussion with Qamar-ul Huda, Senior Program Officer in the Religion and Peacemaking Program and a Scholar of Islam at the US Institute of Peace

With: Qamar-ul Huda Berkley Center Profile

June 8, 2010

Background: This June 2010 exchange between Qamar-ul Huda and Susan Hayward focuses on Huda’s experiences as a Pakistani-American, which led him into the field of Islamic peacemaking, and his work for USIP in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It took place as part of preparatory work for a Berkley Center/World Faiths Development Dialogue/USIP consultation on gender, religion, and peace, at Georgetown University in July 2010.

Tell me a bit about your background and experiences that led you to become involved in religious peacemaking as a career.

My childhood was mainly spent in New York City—Manhattan and Queens. My father was with the Pakistan Foreign Service, so we spent time both in Pakistan and in the United States. My interest in these issues was first piqued by my experience of migration: families picking up and moving for the sake of security, and parents wanting to protect their families. My parents are a part of the generation of children who created Pakistan, from which over eight million lives were lost. They personally lost family members, and they lost friends in the war over East Pakistan. In the 1970s, Pakistanis were recovering from war, and the future was precarious. So examining and understanding how people bring about safety was a factor in their decision to move to the U.S., as was the lack of opportunities and the way conflict might stymie development in Pakistan. This question shaped our family narrative: how do families and communities secure themselves and root themselves in order to ensure protection and opportunities? These things are achieved via reliable public services, especially education. Even things as mundane as reliable water, electricity, hospitals, and a postal system are integral for individuals trusting their lives in a fragile society.

What piqued your interest in religion?

Most South Asians are groomed to study medicine. And I did pre-med until sophomore year in college, but in college I was interested in philosophy and religion and the interplay of international relations with religion. In the 1980s. everywhere you turned there were news items showing Islam as a source of conflict and discord. At this time. I had little education in Islamic studies, and so I wanted to understand it better. My parents were faithful, and we followed Islamic law as closely as we could, living as a minority in this country. In a lot of Islamic countries you get some education of Islam in public schools, or madrassas, or private tutors.

I wanted to study religion, my heritage, and history, more in depth. The tabloid news items didn’t settle with me, the Islam presented by the Iranian hostage situation, the assassination of Anwar Sadat, or the invasion of Lebanon etc. These essentially made me question what was behind the headlines. My family and friends weren’t giving me answers to these questions that satisfied me. And the media and other sources also didn’t give me a clear picture of the role of Islam in these events, and how it was being used. Even as an adolescent, I felt that Islam was being demonized or misrepresented, and I also felt I was being associated with those activities by non-Muslims in the U.S. I needed to make more sense of all this—intellectually, spiritually. I didn’t want to do this just through the lens of international relations, or anthropology. I wanted first to understand the theology and the rich intellectual and cultural heritage. So I studied overseas, and there I came to understand better how it is that other Muslims come to advocate positions of violence. I went to Syria, Egypt, India, and Pakistan—spent short stints there, a year in each place.

That whole experience reconnected me with different Islamic communities, to whom I had felt uprooted. But I also felt closer to the issues than I had in NYC. I felt more tied to the umma, the Muslim community. There is a Muslim community in the States, of course, but as an American teen I felt that the real ummah was overseas in the Middle East and Africa.

I returned to the U.S. and earned an M.A. in Islamic Studies and then a Ph.D. in Islamic intellectual history at UCLA.

How did you become involved in conflict resolution and political issues?

My earlier focus on the migration of Suhrawardi Sufi Muslims from Iraq to South Asia in the medieval period examined spiritual formation, historical memory, self-understanding and their spiritual exercises to be peaceful. In retrospect, I think I was understanding conflict resolution from a theological and religious studies approach, and not from the field of western conflict resolution. In a post-9/11 world, the U.S. had just invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. I felt a strong urge to dedicate my professional life to bringing religious leaders more awareness of the world to prevent future conflicts, to resolve these new ones, to help people become peacemakers.

How has your work evolved since you’ve been here at USIP?

Originally, my work was very research-oriented. The Institute was still very academic, or if I recall well, there was a strong emphasis for program officers to produce research. So I thought that was my fit. But I wanted my writing and my working in the field to be feeding each other. The Religion & Peacemaking Program was perfect for that. It allowed me to design a program from scratch and then explore whether there is a possibility for implementing the project. In doing this, we have to think about what is our added value, what skills we have that can make a difference. I was always a little uncomfortable with finding a partner overseas and letting the partner do everything, with my role being simply to send the funds. I always thought of my work as being relationship based, in which we share responsibilities.

We had no programs in Pakistan and Afghanistan when I began. When I went to Pakistan for the first time as a USIP employee, I discovered a different world, a different country than the one I had experienced. There were so many conflicts, so many complex issues; perhaps I was ambivalent about them in previous trips. It appeared to me that some religious people were the most un-peaceful people, by which I mean they were filled with fear, hysteria, and emotional knee-jerk reactions. This seemed like an opportunity to develop peacebuilding and conflict resolution programs.

After several workshops with religious teachers and administrators we produced a peace textbook and it is being used in both men and women’s schools in Pakistan, in madrassas, right now. And we may have follow-up textbooks. In our workshops with teachers, we have sessions on definitions of conflict resolution and peacemaking: what does Islam teach about this, what are the gaps in our courses? For example, currently in ethics classes, there is no discussion of peacemaking, it’s basically just jurisprudence. So we engage with religious teachers, do teacher training, looking for opportunities for expanding peace curriculum.

In Afghanistan, they have been three decades of war. We worked with madrassas the first two years, and now we have peace and reconciliation groups (PRGs) that are comprised of about five religious persons per group, and one or two of the members will be women. There are eight groups in total, throughout the country. In the absence of rule of law, police, or as a result of lack of trust in those institutions, most Afghans will still turn to community or tribal leaders when conflict arises related to all kinds of issues, family, divorce, drugs, etc.

For example, two weeks ago one of our PRGs was involved in a forced marriage issue. One girl was being forced into a marriage. Sometimes this happens because one family is more powerful than the other. The parents of the girl had little recourse. The PRG intervened to provide a space for the family to express why they did not want this. The other family had a space to make their argument for why the man should be able to marry the girl. Each group then came together. The religious leader served as a neutral voice, a convener. Behind the scenes, the PRG met with the family that wanted to force the marriage and argued with them about it, helped raise doubts about the forced marriage. The older person backed down, eventually. So they have made some positive interventions. They were able to do this in the absence of any public institution the family of the girl felt they could go to. It’s not traditional shura (an Islamic form of conflict resolution in which a leader serves as a third party arbitrator). They are oftentimes listening to a voice that wouldn’t normally be heard, and they amplify that voice. They are advocates, trying to give voice to people who have less power. When community leaders raise this voice, people listen.

How are women involved in your projects?

In both countries, we engage women. Not to the extent I would like, however.

In Pakistan, when we provide a workshop for men, we try to have a very similar workshop for women in the same school district. Even in the non-religious world, the text-book we have made in Pakistan is getting a lot of attention from private schools, which is big business in Pakistan. A lot of these schools are run by women. So we are just beginning to enter into conversation with private schools to implement this curriculum, and women will be very involved in this.

A challenge is that we need more women trainers. I can lead a workshop, but I think we could go further if there were more women trainers. They could run the workshops, know what’s really needed in the female madrassas. I change the dynamics when I walk into a room of women. They are more conscientious, some will wear the full burqa.

Why the dearth of female trainers?

Good question, since Pakistani women go into humanities and it seems like a natural fit. I think culturally, women are educated and get the degrees, at least the urban women, and then they get married and tied down to family life. Training presents challenges: mobility, for which women will need to get permission from family. Also, a teacher from a madrassa needs permission to go to a workshop. If a woman were to leave village, she would have to travel with a man or relative. This has a lot of repercussions.

Have you noted any differences in how women approach these issues in your workshops?

Men like to start with theology, scriptural reasoning or, more accurately, scriptural support for their arguments. They will talk about how the Prophet is a peaceful example, we are peaceful, etc. Women teachers will start with theology, but it has a conservative slant: ‘we must do this work of Islamic peacemaking in order to preserve a strong family, which preserves a strong community and society.’ They are doing more than just teaching young children; they see themselves as keeping the society together.

With women teachers, they really focus on child development. They have an amazing grasp of the differences between the capabilities of a nine and an eleven year old. They have a better sense of what will work in the classroom, what will work with the students.

Men think about the institution, money, funding, building capacity, ways to secure more computers, English language instruction, ways to travel to workshops, etc. They think about how to operate outside of Pakistan. Female teachers think of the microcosm, the very institution they work in, the very community they operate in.

But what’s noteworthy is that both are very critical of secular advocates—of human rights and justice teachers. It’s amazing. Sometimes you forget that the secular/religious debate is so far removed in the States. It comes out in our culture wars or debates over abortion, equal marriage. But it is very front and center in South Asian societies.

There are very famous women scholars who are involved in human rights—Asma Jhanghir, for example. She has come to one of our madrassa workshops; we wanted her to introduce them to human rights. I was afraid that these devout religious men would bash this secular woman and that the divide would come out in the workshop. But our two-hour workshop extended into four hours and it was an amazing session. They were asking about the basis of human rights and Islamic law. She talks about things that resonate with the men: anti-trafficking, anti-drugs, maintaining the rule of law for a society, and living a non-violent life. Issues on which they want to cooperate.

The point is to find similar issues. And to move away from superficial assumptions—the mentality of ‘she is wearing hijab so I don’t have anything in common with her.’ Once both sides can have a working conversation, they will move beyond these superficial stereotypes, and they will be able to hear each other.

But my objective is not to bridge the secular/religious divide. My objective is to get the religious communities engaged in these issues, which ultimately brings them into engagement with the human rights field, with NGOs, etc. A lot of the religious communities already have social services, but they are isolated and contained. They see NGOs as competitors. So I’m trying to push them to cooperate with others. To be less isolated, more engaged. What’s wrong with collaborating with others who have similar objectives? What’s wrong with sharing resources and materials?

Are there any questions you bring to our July conference?

What can you do given these limitations on gender, and what can you do to contest these limitations? And here I mean gender separation, boundaries of financial support, and I’m thinking primarily of Muslim societies. How can women be drawn out of their communities to participate?

I’m convinced that none of this can be done without a connection to the business community. The private sector needs to be engaged in peacemaking. Many of these communities I’m dealing with—men and women—want x, y, and z and that requires support from the outside world. Training in microfinance or creating business plans or connect with other businesses. If their current projects are not operating/succeeding, they don’t want to take on new projects.

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