NOTE: Due to blizzard conditions in the D.C. area, Al-Suwaij is unable to travel to Nashville. The event has been canceled.
Zainab Al-Suwaij, co-founder and executive director of the American Islamic Congress, is scheduled to speak Wednesday, Feb. 10, at 6:30 p.m. in Room 103 of Wilson Hall. The topic is “The Struggle for Women’s Equality in the Muslim World.”
The event is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by Project Dialogue, a yearlong, university-wide program that seeks to involve the Vanderbilt community in public debate and discussion. The program also attempts to connect classroom learning with larger societal issues. The theme for this year’s Project Dialogue is “Civility and Justice for Whom?”
The American Islamic Congress is a non-profit established in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to build interfaith understanding, mobilize a moderate voice in the American Muslim community and promote civil rights in the Muslim world.
Al-Suwaij’s goal is to promote a positive Muslim-American voice that strengthens interfaith relations and addresses the many challenges in the Muslim world. Born in Basra, Iraq, she participated in the failed 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein – an experience she recounted in a memoir for The New Republic. After participating in the uprising, she fled to the United States. The granddaughter of Basra’s leading cleric, she is a Hashemite, a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. Al-Suwaij characterizes her personal religious beliefs as a hybrid of traditional and progressive.
Al-Suwaij leads interfaith and tolerance programs for mosques, churches, synagogues, colleges and high schools. She has developed classroom curricula, works with the Anti-Defamation League and serves on Connecticut’s Hate Crimes Advisory Board. She is a board member of George Mason University’s Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution and has been named an Ambassador for Peace by the Interreligious Federation for World Peace.
She has testified to the Senate, briefed the offices of the president and the secretary of state and works with Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Boston Globe, and she has been interviewed by NPR, CNN, FOX and Al-Jazeera.
Since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Al-Suwaij has been working in Iraq to strengthen women’s rights and help rebuild the Iraqi education system. She led the Iraqi Women’s Educational Institute, which trained female civil society activists in principles of democracy and civic leadership. Al-Suwaij co-founded the Iraqi Women Higher Counsel – which successfully lobbied the Iraqi Interim Governing Council to mandate 25 percent of parliamentary seats for women.
Al-Suwaij’s latest initiative is HAMSA, a project that unites Americans to support human rights activists in the Middle East. She helped launch an essay contest for young Middle Easterners on the importance of individual rights, serving on a judging panel with authors Azar Nafisi and Gloria Steinem. Al-Suwaij also directs the AIC’s Washington office, promoting a progressive Muslim agenda to political leaders and policy makers.
Media contact: Princine Lewis, (615) 322-2706
princine.lewis@vanderbilt.edu