Talking to UNFPA staff and hearing about Thoraya’s vision, I came to realize that she was one of the most incredible articulators of what is in my he… - Azza Karam

There are moral imperative, social imperative, and healthy imperative, indeed cultural, financial, military imperative for us to work together. All religions have much to teach, and we will be humble, we should be humble in understanding that we have to learn from one another that the main and most important lesson of survival is inter respect and interdependence we have.

I want to be able to serve that sense of unity of purpose around an issue of deep pain in the great hope that this is also a source of relief and healing for so many even as we stand together while many are still suffering on a minute-by-minute basis around the world. We stand together emanating a sense of responsibility to try and ensure that our respective positions where we stand can be committed to the healing that is absolutely needed especially as the world has just become much more complicated with the pandemic.

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