RISING Women UlamaWomen Leadership for Peace, Prosperity and Pluralism

15 March 2018 | London , Westminster, House of Lords

What can we learn from the contribution of women peacebuilders in pluralist societies?

Welcome

Welcome to this discussion about the role of women peacebuilders in pluralist societies.

This event forms part of the ongoing dialogue created by the RISING Global Peace Forum to promote new ways to provoke peace. RISING is based in Coventry, which is famous throughout the world as a city of peace and reconciliation, and is an initiative hosted at the University’s Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, in partnership with Coventry City Council and Coventry Cathedral.

In the past three years RISING has organised an international symposium bringing together prominent politicians, policymakers, academics and practitioners to discuss their experiences. Previous speakers have included Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP. RISING events have also been organised in Stormont, Bogota and Baltimore where, in different circumstances, building peace through dialogue after violent conflict has been possible.

This RISING Women event includes several speakers each of whom will share their experiences of the role of women in building peace in pluralist societies. Our main example will be from Indonesia where, in the past few years in the 4th more populous country of the world, women have played a key role in building peaceful and prosperous communities.

In April 2017 more than 500 people from Indonesia and 12 other countries gathered to attend a gathering of women ulama near Cirebon, a coastal city in West Java, Indonesia. This National Congress of Indonesian women or KUPI (Kongres Ulama Perempuan Indonesia) opened with a declaration on the right of women to interpret Islamic texts and to produce and disseminate religious views as part of the universal obligation of all ulama to eradicate all forms of injustice. As ulama, the women made a pledge to Islam, their nation and humanity, as Muslims and as citizens of Indonesia and the world. At a time seen by some people to be dominated by chauvinistic Islam, KUPI produced fatwa on critical issues such as child marriage, sexual violence and ecological destruction in the face of inequality. This was a manifestation of their commitment to justice for all in the family, community and nation-state. For many in the Muslim world, KUPI’s achievements signal new possibilities for a progressive and inclusive Islam for the 21st century and enhance Indonesia’s potential leadership role in this regard.

Thank you to Lord Alderdice for hosting today’s discussion in this inspiring venue and the British Council for its financial support. I am sure that you will be equally inspired by the stories that you hear today. There is always more that we can learn from others about how best to build peace.

Please do participate in the discussion both during the event today, afterwards over light refreshments downstairs and in future weeks and months via RISING’s online platforms. I look forward also to meeting you at future RISING symposia, whether at RISING Britain in June, our Global Peace Forum in September or at any other RISING event.

Professor Mike Hardy CMG OBE FRSAExecutive DirectorCentre for Trust, Peace and Social RelationsCoventry University

Programme

Welcome Professor Mike Hardy

Speakers Kamala Chandrakirana Faqiuddin Abdul KodirBadriyah Fayumi MunjiDwi Rubiyanti Kholifah Professor Nishi Mitra vom Berg Professor Azyumardi Azra

Open Discussion

Closing remarksLord John Alderdice

Please join us after the discussion for light refreshments downstairs in Dining Room A #RISINGWomenUlama

Kamala Chandrakirana Kamala is an Indonesian feminist and advocate for human rights, justice and democracy. She has just completed her term as a member of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women in Law and Practice (2011-2017). From 1998 to 2009, she led Indonesia’s National Commission on Violence against Women, a mechanism for women’s human rights created by Presidential Decree.

Kamala is a founding member of the Asia Pacific Women’s Alliance on Peace and Security, a co-founder of the Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights Asia and Pacific and a member of the largest regional feminist network, Asia Pacific Women Law and Development. In Indonesia, she coordinates a national network advocating for truth and justice for gross violations of human rights and supports local groups working on peacebuilding from the grassroots.

Kamala is a co-founder and board member of Musawah, a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family. In Indonesia, she sits on governance bodies of Fahmina, a centre for gender justice and democracy within Islam, and Rahima, an NGO building capacity on women’s rights for women ulama. She is also in the core team that initiated the Indonesian Congress of Women Ulama (KUPI).

Faqiuddin Abdul Kodir Faqih is the founder of the Fahmina Foundation, an Indonesian NGO working on gender, democracy, and pluralism from an Islamic perspective. He is also General Secretary of ALIMAT, a national movement for the just and equal family in Indonesia from an Islamic perspective and a lecturer on the Hadith and the legal injunction at Syekh Nurjati State Institute for Islamic Studies and the Fahmina Institute for Islamic Studies, Cirebon. In 2017, Faqih was deputy-head of the KUPI organizing committee.

Faqih’s work is concerned with the formulation of how gender justice is culturally negotiated and adopted within an Islamic perspective. Since 2000 he has trained many clerics, scholars, activists, and civil servants in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand in this perspective. He has joined the Musawa Global Network, working for justice in Muslim family law. His focus is on the manner in which traditions should be engaged in social change initiated and owned by the communities.

Faqih’s doctoral thesis explored how Muslim communities are struggling for gender justice and he argues that the “hermeneutic of reciprocity” (qira’ah mbadalah) can retrieve key aspects of the equality of women and men from the tradition that has been neglected by “Muslim Feminists”.

Badriyah Fayumi MunjiBadriyah Fayumi is the Chair of the Steering Committee of the 2017 KUPI.Together with her husband, Abu Bakar Rahziz, Badriyah currently runs a pesantren (Islamic boarding school) in West Java.

She is the editor of Noor Magazine, Chair of Alimat Indonesia and member of the Fatwa Committee of the Indonesia Council of Ulamas. She was born into a pesantren tradition, and completed her primary and secondary education both in a public school as well as at a pesantren in her native town in Central Java.

Badriyah graduated from the State Islamic Institute Jakarta in 1995 and then pursued her education in Al Azhar University Cairo, graduating in 1998. She also holds a Masters from UIN (UIN State Islamic University) Jakarta, where she was a lecturer from 1997 to 2004. She was an MP from 2004 to 2009 and Chair of the Indonesia Child Protection Commission (2010-2014).

She has authored/co-authored eight books and is a regular speaker at national and international conferences. Badriyah is active in promoting gender-orientated, peaceful and tolerant Islam. From 2002 to 2004 her ‘dakwah’ (religious teachings) are televised weekly. She continuously advocates the same in mosques and villages.

Introducing our speakers

Dwi Rubiyanti Kholifah Ruby has a Masters in Health and Social Sciences from Mahidol University, Thailand. She was a winner of an N-Peace Award in 2016 and named as one of the BBC’s top 100 Women in 2014.

Ruby has written extensively on peacebuilding, including The Hidden Pearls - Heroic Stories of Women Peace Builders (UNDP Jakarta 2016), Injustice, Gap and Inequality: Long Road To Post-2015 Sustainable Development (2013) and The Future of Asian Feminisms: Confronting Fundamentalism, Conflict and Neoliberalism, (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2012).

Ruby has presented at several international conferences including the Global Women Peace and Security Forum in Washington DC in May 2017 and at the 2017 UNDP Seoul Debate on Lessons Learnt on Addressing Gender-Based Violence From Korea and Around the World.

Ruby is actively engaged with several global alliances bringing together women’s rights and peace practitioners including The Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership, The Asia-Pacific Women’s Alliance for Peace and Security, Action Asia and Women Waging Peace.

Professor Nishi Mitra vom BergNishi is the Professor at the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. A trained Social-Cultural Anthropologist by background, she has a rich experience of teaching and researching on women’s issues for more than twenty years. She teaches courses on feminist theories and perspectives, feminist research methodology, sexuality and gender-based violence and feminist peace studies.

Nishi has led the development and launch of the Masters Program in Women’s Studies at TISS in partnership with the universities in Bristol, Keele, London Metropolitan, Warwick and York. She has experience of the Gender Planning Training Project of the Government of India and the UK’s Department for International Development, and has researched on issues of child marriage, femicide, marital rape, domestic violence and women in academia. She has led several institutional research and teaching partnerships in higher education in Brazil, Germany, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Sweden. She has formulated and directed an international Certificate in Professional and Personal Leadership at TISS and is an accredited trainer from Ruth Cohn Institute for TCI International, Berlin.

Nishi is currently leading a UNDP Project for strengthening a Gender and Women’s Studies Program at Kabul University, Afghanistan and with a Linneaus Palme Award from Sweden she is developing a Diploma Program in Gender and Human Rights for TISS.

Professor Azyumardi Azra CBEProfessor Azra has a global reputation for promoting international academic exchange and cross-cultural and cross-religious dialogue, and for his outstanding contribution to mutual understanding between the Islamic world and the non-Islamic world.

Azyumardi is a senior Professor of Islamic History and Culture and former Rector at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University of Jakarta, having been born in western Sumatra and studied at Colombia University, USA.

He wrote The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia (2004) which revealed the long history of East-West cultural exchanges. In total he has authored more than 36 books and, because of his outstanding contribution in the modernisation of Islamic education, he won The Asia Foundation Award in 2005.

Currently, Azyumardi is the editor-in-chief of the Indonesian Journal for Islamic Studies, Studia Islamika, which is published by Centre for the Study of Islam and Society. In 2010 he was awarded the CBE in recognition of his extraordinary work in interfaith and intercivilisation dialogue and became the first non-Commonwealth person who may use the title ‘Sir’ before his name.

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