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The skills to make a difference
Aziza Hasan facilitates interfaith dialogue in order to build peace between peoples.
by Melanie Zuercher
To Aziza Hasan, communication is vital to peacemaking. Communication is what she does as southern California director of government relations for the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and what she promotes as co-director of NewGround, a project that works with emerging young leaders from both Jewish and Muslim communities.
Aziza graduated from Bethel in 2003, having received a Thresher Award for excellence in debate and forensics. Her father, Farouq Hasan (who died in 1995), studied at Bethel in the 1970s and her uncles, Shawkat Hasan, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Shafiq Hasan, Newton, graduated from Bethel in 1972 and 1975, respectively. Aziza’s siblings followed her to Bethel – sister Annam (Annie) ’06 and brothers Omar ’09 and Laith (just finished his freshman year). Aziza, now living in Los Angeles, was Bethel’s 2010 commencement speaker May 23. Context spoke with her earlier in the spring.
Context: How is communication, and how are communication skills, important to the work you’re doing now?
Aziza Hasan: After I graduated from Bethel in 2003, I spent two terms as an AmeriCorps volunteer and then as staff at Interfaith Ministries in Wichita. I moved to California in the middle of 2006 to work with NewGround, a collaboration between MPAC and the Progressive Jewish Alliance. I felt a strong calling to be able to put my conflict resolution skills to work.
A big element of NewGround is a commitment to develop civic leaders for American Muslim and Jewish communities. It targets [young people] in their 20s and 30s, on the cusp of major community involvement, just coming onto, or about to be on, boards of institutions. NewGround gives them an extra push.
First of all, when it comes to Israel-Palestine, relationships tend to dissolve as soon as tensions mount overseas. NewGround gives people a chance to talk about their pain and confusion without dissolving communication. So NewGround has a component just for that. We work on networking skills and building skills for engaging in dialogue and planting oneself in a community.
Second, we help young leaders connect to the LA community through service projects and other ways, helping the broader community recognize “We’re part of you and we want to make our community better.”
[In my position as director of government relations for] MPAC, which has as its purpose to inform and shape institutions and policies that relate to American Muslims, my job is to focus on public policy- and decision-makers, in government, media and Hollywood (movies). We work to be interfaith – we can leverage our position better working with allies than on our own.
Context: What are some specific things you’ve done in your job with MPAC?
AH: I wrote a paper, which is posted on the MPAC website, on women and Islam and I went to Washington, D.C., with a colleague to present the paper [to lawmakers and their representatives]. It argued for women’s rights and for not using Islamic law as an excuse to oppress women, going back to the Qu’ran itself, which is against child marriage and so on. We have made recommendations to the State Department on how to engage Muslim communities domestically and internationally, and we’ve worked on other issues that affect us [as Muslims] and align with other human rights groups. The most effective counter-terrorism is to speak for ourselves and not allow others to define or label us and say what Islam is.
As far as the media and movies, we consult on scripts to get an accurate story told. We don’t insist there must always be a positive picture of Islam, but it’s the misconceptions and untruths that hurt us the most.
We’ve worked on an initiative regarding Islamophobia and torture that was launched by progressive Christians who said, “We don’t believe in torture.” We have met with government representatives, including Senator Dianne Feinstein.
We also work on community empowerment by encouraging people to report hate crimes and not simply hush them up.
[After the shooting deaths of 12 people at Ft. Hood, a large Army base near Killeen, Texas, Nov. 5, 2009, Aziza appeared on national television in a press conference that MPAC organized.] It was painful, that something like this could happen again. We were working so hard to teach that Muslims are part of this solution, and then this guy [Nidal Malik Hasan] who was part of the military was taking revenge on the people he was supposed to protect. Right afterward, at a moment’s notice, [we organized the press conference and] both the sheriff and the chief of the LAPD were there to condemn the shooting. Law enforcement was saying, ‘We won’t stand for hate crimes and related violence [against Muslims in retaliation].’ There was extra police protection for children going to school. It demonstrated that the relationship we had [built] has gone a long way. We have a responsibility to address things like this and speak against them.
Context: Has MPAC taken a position on France’s ban of the wearing of the hijab (Muslim headscarf for women) or Switzerland’s ban (in late November 2009) on building any new minarets on mosques?
AH: The important underlying issue is integration, and I doubt a ban on the hijab will help that. The serious, alarming issue is the Islamophobia. The constant rumbling beneath the surface is polarizing. And there is responsibility on both ends. There is a huge Muslim population in the ghettos in France. French officials need to provide opportunities for engagement [with the Muslim population] and the people need to take responsibility to engage. To quote MPAC’s executive director, religious freedom and free speech are two sides of the civil rights coin; they need to be integrated. In Switzerland, the need is for integration as well and if one side is alienated, not engaged, both sides will suffer.
The blessing of being Muslim or a person of faith in the United States is that you can practice as long as you respect others. What we try to do [in MPAC] is empower voices – such as the “Christmas bomber’s” father – to speak out when you know something is wrong. We did a paper on community policing and community organizing that we gave to law enforcement and the government. We’ve had a strong reaction to “radicalization” within the Muslim community. How do we support people who are feeling alienated so they have an outlet instead of violence?
Context: How did your Bethel education contribute to what you’re doing now?
AH: I majored in history and social science, with a minor in human services and peace, justice and conflict studies and a mediation certificate. I worked with KIPCOR for three years while I was at Bethel.
Bethel has influenced the lens through which I see conflict: as an opportunity to grow and to clarify one’s thoughts. People need to be honest, to discuss what’s been festering beneath the surface.
At Bethel, I learned the skills I needed to make a difference – for example, I wouldn’t have been able to facilitate Muslim-Jewish dialogue without what I learned. It came from professors, reading, trainings and hands-on practice. I did small claims court mediation, so it wasn’t just theory, it was also practice.
I learned not to be afraid of conflict. I had great mentors in Gary Flory, Patty Shelly and Julie Hart, who helped me think through things in a new way. I grew up a second time when I came to Bethel. I thought I had all the answers and discovered there was much more to learn.
Aziza spoke to the class of 2010 on “Leveraging Learning Opportunities.” She gave them five ways to do so: 1) Be specific; say what you mean and pay attention to language; 2) LOL – Listen, Observe, Learn; 3) Ban the word “but” from your vocabulary; 4) Commit to honest conversation; and 5) Constantly seek to improve and invest in yourself. For more, see the story on page 10. To learn more about MPAC or NewGround, visit the following websites: www.mpac.org; newgroundproject.weebly. com