Haniya Faisal

Transcript
Slide 1:
Hello, this is haniya faisal and for my project i will be proposing a solution to the globally
prevalent issue of violence against religious minorities.

Slide 2:
First and foremost, we will be looking at what violence against religious minorities is, alongside
as to why it is a locally and globally significant problem. Subsequently, we will be discussing the
solutions needed to tackle this issue and then focus on why this issue needs to be solved. This
will be followed by the details of my proposed solution, where I'll be explaining its benefits and
challenges.
Then, I'll be drawing a conclusion from my research, which will be followed by the citations.

Slide 3:
So let us first define the problem. The World Economic Forum defines that Violence against
religious minorities includes intimidation, harassment and internment to terrorism and outright
warfare. The World Economic Forum, being a well-reputed and long standing international
organization, is a credible source since it has access to reliable data sources.
So, why is this issue so important to discuss?
Well, the problem of religious violence has steadily been increasing over the years, where in
2015, 56% of all armed conflicts that occurred globally resulted from religious issues, increasing
by more than 18% since the year 2000, as indicated by the line graph.
The World Economic Forum further cites that bloody conflicts on religious grounds have been
reported in more than 50 countries, primarily in Syria, Iraq, India, Myanmar, and Pakistan.

Now, this is a locally prevalent issue as well. In its recent article from 2017, the Oxford Human
Rights Hub established Pakistan as the third least religiously tolerant country in the world. In
addition, in 2013 alone, nearly 700 persons from the Shia minority group in Pakistan were killed
and more than 1,000 were injured in sectarian attacks which explains how religious violence is
an urgent problem in Pakistan.
Since we have defined the local and global relevance of the problem, we should now focus on a
set of proposed solutions to it.

Slide 4:
So, this issue can be resolved through a series of educational reforms and legal policies. In this
presentation, we will be looking at the educational reforms that can mitigate this issue by
introducing a religiously tolerant school curriculum and creating an oversight board for religious
schools (which are otherwise known as madrassas)
and by educating women.

In my opinion, education reforms would prove a much better way of eliminating religious
violence compared to legal policies since this problem altogether could be most
 effectively tackled by educating individuals on religious tolerance on a school-level, so
that they are not compelled towards religiously-violent activities as adults.

Slide 5:
Next, we'll look at why educational reforms are needed.

a) First and foremost, we must recognize that the curriculum implemented in schools needs
to be amended on an urgent basis. According to a report by the United States
Commission on International Religious Freedom: “Government issued textbooks in
Pakistan teach students that Hindus, (who are a religious minority there), are backward
and superstitious”. The same report tells us that there is also a severe minority of
teachers and students in Pakistani schools who believe in equal rights for various
religious groups.
And the table below shows that only 4% of teachers and 13% of students in madrassa-
style schools believe in equal rights for the Ahmedi community (who are a highly
persecuted religious minority in Pakistan). This also propagates a culture of religious
violence.
The figures from this table lend credibility to my argument since they have been
compiled as a result of varied sources, such as focus group discussions, case studies
and expert interviews. This makes the figures cited dependable and less likely to be from
a biased source, thus strengthening my argument.

b) Religious vigilantism is also a huge cog in the machine in terms of sparking religious
violence. Extreme right-wing political parties often engage in such activities, such as the
Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP). For instance, in December 2021, a factory manager
was beaten and lynched by a violent mob over mere allegations of blasphemy.
Such incidents lead to religious violence and are not atypical in Pakistan, making it all
the more important for us to resolve this issue.

c) Now we move to our third reason. So Sage Journals defines that due to illiteracy,
religious minorities are unaware of their political rights and responsibilities such as the
laws protecting them and the purpose of voting, which adds onto the problem at hand.

This study by Sage Journals is a reliable source since it was compiled using primary
data in form of interviews from persons from various religious minority groups, thus
making the data less likely to be misconstrued, which is often the case with secondary
data. However, this study is restricted to the terrorism stricken area of Kohat in Pakistan,
and cannot be generalized to other areas of the world, thus serving as a weakness of
this argument.
Moreover, implementing legal reforms in such terrorism-stricken areas is futile as
implementing the law is already difficult there. So, in such cases, educating religious
 minorities about their rights would prove more beneficial than introducing legal reforms
to solve religious violence.

Slide 6:
Now we move onto our next slide, which tells us that there are specific steps that need to be
taken to tackle religious violence via educational reforms. Such as:
a) Introducing a religiously tolerant school curriculum
A great example of this would be the Modesto school system in California that underwent a
nine-week ‘World Religion’ course in the year 2000, promoting religious tolerance. The graph
shows that after taking the course, there was a 5% increase in students who supported the
extension of basic religious liberties, such as wearing religious symbols and clothing, as shown
in the graph.
Although, a weakness of this source is that since it cites that the programme was introduced in
California, it wouldn't be applicable to Pakistan, since Pakistan’s social environment is fairly
conservative in comparison to California in the US.
However, such programmes should still be introduced after being altered to Pakistan’s cultural
environment and should be applied nationwide through a Single National Curriculum or the SNC
to ensure that madrassas, public and private schools have the same curriculum that
discourages religious violence however it does not promote respect and acceptance of religious
diversity which in my opinion is important.

Moving onto our second step of our solution,

b) A madrassa oversight board should also be in place to train teachers in human rights
standards. This board should also undertake the responsibility of formalizing education
in madrassas to incentivize madrassa-going students to receive diplomas alongside
learning to be more religiously tolerant.

c) Ensuring that women receive education is also a leading example of solving this issue.
This will increase women’s contributions in prevention of religious violence in their
localities and beyond as confirmed by reliefweb, a non-profit for humanitarians around
the world. Thus, girls’ education should be incentivized by measures such as subsidizing
school fees or by providing stipends at primary, middle, and high-school levels.

Slide 7:
Moving on, we’ll be discussing why my solution is beneficial.

a) According to the flow chart shown, if the Single National Curriculum is introduced in
Pakistan, it will ensure that all children are not only taught the same values of religious
tolerance, but will also guarantee equal opportunity for every child to receive high quality
education, thus minimizing social disparity between students from madrassas, public
and private schools. Fostering religiously tolerant-attitudes early on will pave the way for
a religiously-tolerant society in the future.
 b) Another benefit of my solution is that in countries like Pakistan, where a lot of women are
already out of school, educating women ensures that a larger percentage of the
country’s population consists of an educated workforce, thus contributing to the
economy.

Slide 8:
Since we have discussed the steps to my solution, we will now discuss the challenges posed to
my solutions. So I found that religious leaders of minority groups are often reluctant to allow
women from their communities to leave their homes to receive education.
This issue can be overcome by carrying out awareness campaigns promoting women’s
education that go door-to-door in remote areas, such as the one conducted in Govindpura, in
India to increase admissions to Delhi’s government schools.

Similarly, seeking results via educational reforms will require heavy investment on a national
level, which third-world countries like Pakistan cannot afford. However, there are many
international organizations such as the UN department of economic and social affairs that can
help with the funding aspect.

Slide 9:
Conclusively, we have summed up why this issue needs to be resolved and how some
innovative educational reforms such as creating a madrassa-oversight board can help tackle it.
We have also looked at specific examples from around the globe where these reforms have
borne fruitful results, which shows that it is an effective solution. Thus the government of
Pakistan should pay heed to them and institute such reforms on an immediate basis. Now I'll be
showing you the citations.