|
Introduction
During December 4-5th, 2004, Karamah: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights (Karamah) in partnership with Asian & Pacific Islander (API) Institute on Domestic Violence co-sponsored a national summit of Muslim women leaders and activists in the United States (the Summit). The goal of this Summit was to identify and prioritize the key issues that Muslim women face in the United States and abroad.
Our partner, API Institute on Domestic Violence is a national network of social justice organizations. It serves as a forum for, and clearinghouse on information, research, resources, and critical issues about violence against women in Asian and Pacific Islander communities.
American Muslim Women’s Summit
The goal of the Summit was to identify and prioritize the urgent issues that needed to be addressed in order to improve Muslim women’s lives and advance their rights at home and abroad. We invited American Muslim women leaders, scholars, and activists who were at the forefront in advocating the rights of Muslim women, primarily from within an Islamic perspective.
We framed a variety of broad issues through brief presentations and prior mailings of thought-provoking articles. The Summit gave the participants a collective opportunity to articulate and discuss the key issues faced by Muslim women in the U.S. At the end, the participants agreed on a list of critical issues that required attention by Muslim jurists.
The outcomes of this Summit were shared with Karamah’s Muslim Women Jurists Network, thus connecting jurists to grassroots. Work is in progress to address the various issues raised by the Summit’s final report, as well as other issues of importance to women outside the United States.
Karamah plans to organize a broad-based international conference for the global Muslim women community. In this conference we hope to launch grass root and policy level campaigns to present our conclusions and recommendations. Given the dearth of serious scholarship in the area of Muslim women’s rights, we believe that this approach will open new doors in the development of Muslim women’s rights domestically and globally.
Final
Report of the Summit - Download (PDF)
************************
|
