Azza Karam Quotes

It's one thing to work at an organization, it’s an entirely different thing to lead it. When you work at an organization, it’s easier to be the “servant of it.

In a way, religions are the last bastions of patriarchy. And so, to be a leader of an endeavor like this—where my role, essentially, is to ask people to be of good conscience and do the right thing by working together—that can be met with resistance.

...we are living in times when conflicts are erupting all around us, many either with a religious tinge, or where religious reasons are being used to justify atrocities. Again, if religious leaders and their institutions, from all over the world and representing all faiths, are not part of confronting the fallacies of belief and actively advocating for coming together in peace and justice, then who will do so?

Gender is very often intimately connected to sexuality – who we believe we are, how we feel and see and use our bodies. For this reason, almost all faith traditions have an opinion on the matter. The more institutionalised the religion, the more dominant the framework of gender, sex and patriarchy.

I have thought about it, even if that’s because it would be impossible for me not to see many things from a woman’s point of view, with a woman’s sensibilities. I also think there are things I could do as a Muslim. In my acceptance speech I reached out to Muslim leaders to join the Religions for Peace and there was an immediate positive reaction and many came on board as members of the World Council, our governing board.

We will always be striving to ensure that our Interreligious Councils are well-resourced, supported, and better capacitated to be financially accountable and actionable entities. That is a lifelong process.

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

The magnitude, scope, and diversity of their participation in the revolution is itself a testament to how intrinsic to the social, economic, legal, and political fabric they already are—and have been.

The religious common ground to all faith traditions is that human life is sacred. And the most vulnerable amongst us are the ones that deserve the most from each of us.

...each religious community on its own is very rich. But when it comes to religious community members who are willing to stick their necks out, come together, and work across religions, there is very little money for that. Even the biggest governments don’t provide financial support for that kind of work.

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.

There are many religions and many, many religious people. The number of those within those groups who are speaking out against the scientific evidence is relatively small. If we look at the broad group of religious institutions, whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and so on, we realize a large majority is actually calling for a scientific perspective regarding vaccines. There’s a great deal of thought that taking vaccines is actually almost a religious obligation. We just have to keep advocating

...behavioural change in most parts of the world in which religion remains deeply rooted in people’s consciousness is rendered possible when religious leaders start speaking to the necessity of that change as part of what makes a person more faithful.

...we don’t need to go outside to learn, if we come together in our diversity, institution diversity, religious diversity, cultural diversity, national diversity, social diversity, cultural diversity, if we come together in our diversity, all the knowledge we need is within, is between us

It is seriously myopic to assume that the Muslim Brotherhood is “anti-women.” I first started studying the Brotherhood, as part of a range of Islamist formations around the world, back in the late 1980s. Even within the organization itself, there are diverse perspectives on women’s rights: there are extremely active, very well-educated, cultured, and articulate women members of the Brotherhood, just as there are some members who are deeply conservative when it comes to women’s roles in public.