Events Detail

 The Center for Religious Freedom

held a lecture:

Feed the Donkey First:
Freedom of Religion and the Geopolitics of Human Rights
With

Prof. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im

Thursday, November 12, 2009

12:30 – 2:00 PM

          Shea, An-Na'im, and Marshall

Internationally recognized scholar of Islam and human rights, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im discussed ways to challenge punishments for apostasy, "heresy," and dissent, a problem he will argue requires consistent and principled action as well as theological and theoretical innovation. A Sudanese proverb states that you must feed your donkey before you can ride it; we must build a consensus and institutions to protect all human rights as a foundation for defending particular rights.

Prof. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, originally from Sudan, is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory Law School. From 1968 to 1984, he participated in the Islamic reform movement of Ustadh Mahmoud Mohamed Taha in Sudan. He left the country in 1985, as Islamic fundamentalism was taking a stronger hold of Sudanese society and politics. Since joining the Faculty of Emory Law School in 1995, he has focused his scholarship on developing a liberal modernist understanding of Islam and promoting an overlapping consensus about the universality of human rights among different cultural and religious traditions of the world.

Prof. An-Na'im directs several research projects which focus on advocacy strategies for reform through internal cultural transformation, including a program on Islamic family law and a fellowship in Islam and human rights. He is the author of Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights and International Law (Syracuse University Press, 1990) and Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Sharia (Harvard University Press, 2008), among other works. He is a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University and a Senior Visiting Fellow of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, & World Affairs for the Fall 2009 semester.

Hudson Senior Fellow Paul Marshall commented and Senior Fellow Nina Shea moderated and introduced. 

 This lecture is part of the Center for Religious Freedom's fall series on "Lifting the Theocratic Iron Curtain: Examining the Application of Muslim Blasphemy and Apostasy Rules in the Contemporary World."

Betsy and Walter Stern Conference Center
Hudson Institute
1015 15^th Street, NW
Sixth Floor

Washington, D.C. 20005

For more information please contact Beth Kerley at bkerley@hudson.org.