Azza Karam Quotes

Our planet is facing an existential crisis, and we need to ensure that all religious institutions around the world, which together target 80 per cent of the world’s people, can be active in saving this planet.

We had a phenomenal, powerful opportunity to learn from each other across so many different divides, and realize that there was a vision that united them and a shared mission, regardless of their religions.

You don’t really become politicized by a certain event; you grow up politicized.

when it comes to issues like climate change, what the world needs is more women like you.

Political leadership and religious leadership have to be seen as unique and distinct, when there is too much of an overlap between the political institutions and the religious institutions, it doesn’t become so much about faith anymore for the religious—it becomes more about power politics.

The revolution is proceeding with the hiccups associated with any comprehensive transformation entailing the political, social, economic, and legal overhaul of an entire country. Is the

Imagine the grace that can happen when you genuinely challenge what you hold to be dear and true. And it’s particularly in times of crisis that we listen even less well, because we are worried.

...every single religion and faith has its own practices. The number of Christian denominations alone is very large. So to try to bring together all the religions and faiths of the world – it’s not easy.

It was essentially as if a tsunami had hit everywhere in the world, if you can imagine that—there seemed to be a bit of this primitive instinct to protect one’s own. People looked after their communities as if “It’s me, my church, and I.” That’s what led us to creating a humanitarian fund – to support collaborative efforts around COVID-19 by providing financial support to those who had the will, the vision, and the passion to address the immense needs that the pandemic created and to do so while recognizing the multireligious world we live in.

Religion is, or should be, primarily about faith and not about political power. But when religion is used as a tool for those in power to influence politics, then religion can become a tool for harm, whether in the short term or long term.

For religions to be about peace requires many things: we need to appreciate that religious consciousness, spirituality, or belief is a force for good in most people’s lives, and we need to appreciate that religious institutions suffer from some of the same ills as all other institutions populated by humans, but that this is no cause to dismiss all the institutions.

The Netherlands was the perfect environment for me to learn and eventually to strike out on my own. I didn’t really have a choice about coming to the Netherlands, because my father was posted to the Egyptian Embassy in The Hague. And as a good Muslim daughter, who really didn’t have much say in what happened to her, I was transplanted from Egypt. To be honest, I didn’t want to go at the time, but my family insisted.

...we are living in times when traditional institutions of all types are fast losing their legitimacy and their public support. Indeed, we are facing a crisis of all things institutional.

I think it was one of the moments where faith in general becomes very important. You realize the pandemic isn’t something you alone can stop, but it’s also not something that the most powerful government or military can stop. So many of us tended to go back to that which is original – our faith in something bigger and more powerful than us – and more powerful than COVID.

No partnership anywhere in the world does not carry at least a seed of suspicion in it. The point is not to cover or pretend it is not there and that we are all lovey dovey