This program is brought to you by Emory University. Ladies and gentlemen, if I could get your attention, I would like to go ahead and start this wonderful event. Welcome to Emory Law School. My name is Frank Alexander, and on behalf of all of Emory Law School and the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, I'm delighted to welcome you to the 2007 Curry Lecture. The Center for the Study of Law and Religion was created roughly 25 years ago here at Emory. Our Center is committed to the interaction of law and religion, to an examination of the issues, the practices, the policies, the history, and the future. We are convinced that law and religion have multiple dimensions. I would like our work in part from the work of our colleague Harold Berman, that there are religious dimensions of law and legal dimensions of religion, that law and religion interact in institutional ways, in professional ways, in interdisciplinary ways, in international ways. We teach a variety of courses. We involve 75 professors throughout this university. We have four joint degree programs, and we're actively engaged with hundreds of scholars and practitioners throughout this country and through the world. Today's lecture is part of the Curry Lecture Series, which was begun in 1986 in honor of Overton Curry. Over the past 15 to 20 years, we've had a range of national and international speakers as part of this lecture series. Martin Marty, Desmond Tutu, John Noonan, Stephen Carter, Bill Fagy, and many others. We are delighted today to have our colleague Abdulahi Anayim as the Curry Lecturer for 2007. But first, before I introduce Abdulahi Anayim, I want to express our deep appreciation to the Curry family for making this lecture series possible. I know that Martha DeLuca is here, and Lucy, I don't see Lucy yet, Andy Curry, Terry Banta, and others will also be here. So please join me in thanking the Curry family for making this possible. Abdulahi Anayim is known throughout the world for his courage, his grace, his compassion, his wisdom. We'd like to think that this is due to Abdul, but we realize it's due to his family members. And I'm delighted today that Aisha Osman and Ali and Ahmed Anayim are with us, because they're the ones who are teaching our brother Abdulahi Anayim as much as anything. So thank you, members of his family, for being with us today. Charles Howard Candler, Professor of Law. Professor Anayim joined the Emory Law School faculty in 1995 on a full-time basis. Prior to that, he did preparatory work while teaching at a school like Harvard and UCLA and other law schools throughout the world. His JD from Cartoon, Advanced Legal Studies from Cambridge, and his doctorate from Edinburgh. He has written over 15 books and 50 articles translated into more languages than I can count. Prior to coming to Emory, he was director from 1993 to 1995 of Human Rights Watch Africa. For the past two days, I had the privilege of sitting in a roundtable discussion with 15 Islamic scholars discussing Professor Anayim's work on the future of the Sharia. I learned more than I ever thought I would in those two days of simple discussions. But some of the things I learned are simply the magnitude of Professor Anayim's task in his work that he's sharing with us today. Because Professor Anayim believes in theological authority rather than authoritarian theology, he is the Martin Luther for the Islamic faith. Because Professor Anayim believes in the importance of the neutral secular state, he is the Thomas Jefferson for the Islamic faith. Because Professor Anayim is deeply convinced of the importance of the Islamic faith for our actions, our policies, our rules, our procedures, he is the Menachame Lan for the Islamic faith. In all that he does, he exhibits compassion and courage and grace. I am deeply honored to be one of Professor Anayim's students. He is my mentor, our mentor. He is my teacher, our teacher. But above all, I am so thankful that Professor Anayim is our friend and our brother and is here with us today. Alhamdulillah, Professor Anayim. Please join me. Thank you so much, Frank. Let me start by disclaiming much of what Frank said in his very generous and very eloquent introduction. And I think that it will come up, I hope, in my remarks later on, but often that we need to take things in perspective. And that perspective needs to be deeper historically. And humans, in the Quran, the Quran says humans are impatient. We need to be patient and to see things in perspective. And when we do, we will see the real Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King and Martin Luther King of the Muslim world. We will see the Thomas Jefferson's of the Muslim world. My point is that transformation often is appreciated in retrospect. And probably now we are too close and too involved in the events to appreciate their true dimension and significance. But I should have started and I do always start with a salamu alaikum. Now peace to you all, a salamu alaikum, is in fact the universal greeting of Muslims. Everywhere, every day, all the time. In fact, a Muslim, when finishing the prayer five times a day at the end of the prayer, you will say a salamu alaikum, a salamu alaikum, a salamu alaikum. And this imperative of diffusion of peace and sustenance of peace and sharing of peace is in fact the requirement, the fundamental requirements of being a Muslim. Now I realize of course it is not that simple and I realize that most Muslims including myself have not lived up to this problem most of the time. But in speaking about Islam, this is what it is. In speaking about Muslims, then we are speaking about human beings with all that is good and bad about being human. And I take it that the good will last and prevail and the bad will be overcome. But let me go on to present some of my remarks and I hope that we will have a good time for discussion and questions and so on. I think that for my, and in fact I would like to acknowledge my own teacher, my own mentor, Saiz Mahmoud Ahmad Taha of Sudan, who always taught us that it is fear and ignorance that lies at the base of all behavior sort of deviances. That we as human beings are driven by fear and ignorance into the deviance that we do. And therefore understanding why Muslims fail to live up to what is imperative of their religion is because of fear and ignorance. But also how others also are affected by that. Now a little mention of my dress, it is elegant and that's why I wear it. But I also wish to make a statement with this, which is I am a Muslim, I'm an African Muslim from Northern Sudan. And I speak as an African Muslim from Northern Sudan. And I am privileged to be a citizen of a country where I can be an African American Muslim from Sudan originally. So I'm an African American Muslim. As an African American Muslim this is the way I would like to dress and this is how I see myself. And I need to be accepted as such. And I willing and respectfully would also concede the same to all those who wish to be who they are. And for me it is a true privilege and honor to be part of this wonderful community, Emory Law School, which has given me a home. By the way I have been wondering, Frank have been generous, these appointments were out of need rather than out of choice. I would have rather had a home to stay since I had to leave Sudan in the mid 80s. And Emory Law School and Emory University gave me a home. So this is now my home and it is as we who is here in my home. So I'm truly grateful and honored to be part of this faculty, to be part of this community and to be part of the students and wider community of Emory Law School and Emory University. But also my sense is that always privilege entails responsibility. So again in my face that you honor your blessing by paying sank and gratitude by doing what is required and expected of your position and your privilege and your advantage. So it is in that sense that I will be trying to achieve a level of... And I do mean this sincerely with all humility that when I challenge I don't seek to offend but only seek to acknowledge my privilege and seek to share the privilege that others have. And as a Muslim American I challenge the monopoly to define who is a Muslim or who is an American. That is the privilege of being an American is for me to say I define who is American for myself as every other American has the right to do so. And as a Muslim I say I have the right to define what Islam is to me as every Muslim has the right to do so.  It should be possible and if true of all of us everywhere to be who we are and to be comfortable and to be confident and to be happy as who we are. It is not the reality in most places and it may not permanently remain to be the reality of this place if we do not stand up to the obligation and the privilege of being Americans whatever affiliation we have. My point being that it is when as we look around the world we will see most people are denied the privilege that we claim as a fright. But my question is what is the corresponding obligation to that privilege. And this is the sense in which I speak and take advantage of this great honor of the Kerry Lecture platform. The primary audience of the project that I will be trying to highlight briefly are Muslims everywhere. Because and there is a reason why because for me as a Muslim that's where my obligation is that's where I stand. That's for what I am responsible or for which I am responsible.  But also I would like to emphasize that my audience is also human beings everywhere because I do not accept a lasting or permanent dichotomy in terms of race or gender or class or religion. And that we are ultimately all human. It is that our shared humanity that compels me to seek to present ideas to seek understanding and compassion and respect among human beings everywhere. The process of the project is intended to reach out to Muslims. So we have on a website that you can access from Emory Law School homepage a project where you can actually find the full text of the book manuscript that is on this subject in English. But also translations in nine languages. That is Arabic, French, Italian, sorry Russian, Turkish, Bahasa Indonesia, Bengali, Urdu and we are adding Swahili and we will keep adding languages. The point is to reach Muslims in their languages and to be able to respond and to react and to critique from the website in their language without having to know English. So that is the blessing of technology and the blessing of being at Emory Law School and part of the Law and Religion program. In that I have the facility to be able to reach across the world Muslims in their languages and to hear from them in their languages. And that is something that I would like to come on to refer to and emphasize later on. But my point at this stage is to say yes I'm here addressing you but my primary audience are Muslims but I do not take that to be exclusive or in any way exceptional. And I think that is one of the problems that we have to address. A notion of exclusivity and a notion of exceptionalism. And you know I'm sure that some types of exceptionalism that some of us may claim for being American. My point is that the ultimate is being human and exclusivity and exceptionalism undermines our shared humanity. So we should seek understanding we should seek affirmation of our humanity in our respective traditions and contexts. It is not to deny difference in fact difference is permanent and to me is valuable it is to be treasured and celebrated. It is not that human beings will ever be without difference but it is how can we keep our difference while sustaining our humanity and promoting our humanity. In fact being different is human and being and seeking to be the same to be treated with equality and dignity is also human. One of the most eloquent definitions of human rights is by my senior South African scholar Albi Saxe who will actually will be at Emory in a week or so who said human rights are about the right to be the same and the right to be different. It is as much my human right to be different as it is to be the same to be treated with the same equal dignity and that entails being treated as who I am. Now these ideas I'm not taking sort of presenting simply as moral ideals. These are very pragmatic and very practical considerations that it is out of a moral imperative as it is out of a practical imperative and practical necessity that we seek to honor, we seek to understand each other and to appreciate our difference in the same way that we claim it for ourselves to concede it to others. To clarify then my sort of subject specifically for this lecture is that as I said my audience are generally Muslims at large but I very much take it to be integral to that that those of us who are not Muslims are equally entitled to participate in this debate among Muslims. I do not accept exclusivity of discourse so that Muslims only can talk about Islam or to other Muslims and Christians talk to other Christians and use to other Jews. I think that our shared humanity and the pragmatic reality of our sharing this planet requires us to be able to speak so long as we do so with knowledge, with respect and with compassion. And it is never wrong to judge the other. It is always wrong when we judge on mistaken understanding or on formation or out of bias and prejudice. And that is where we need to expect our effort. What I would like to present today is something in the nature of what might be called the predicament of Muslims today regarding Islam. Now people who are Muslims have many predicaments. I'm sure that we are all familiar with social, economic, political issues that all human societies and persons face everywhere. So I'm not talking about Muslims at large in relation to everything. I'm talking about the Islamic dimension of the predicament of Muslims. In what way Islam is relevant and in what way it is paradoxical and problematic for Muslims. And in that sense I would like to try to present and I realize this is a diverse audience to try to present my remarks in a way that for all of us to be able to follow but hopefully for those who may wish to pursue some specific aspects we can do so in our discussion. When I speak of Muslims not Islam, I mean Muslims in their historical context, in their social, economic and political context. And that's why I don't think that it's very helpful to speak about Islam at large in any sense. Especially among Muslims who often tend to speak of Islam in as much an essentializing and simplifying approach as others do.  It is not my pretension to defend Islam and I do not believe that Islam needs to be defended. And I will explain what I mean by that more in later on. The point is that Islam is a world religion with which one-fifth of the total humanity subscribed or identified. That is one in every five persons is a Muslim. According to the CIA facts book there are at least 44 countries where Muslims are the majority of the population. So we are talking about one-fifth of the total world population and we are talking about one-quarter of the membership of the United Nations for example. So it is a huge and highly complex global community. It's a world religion which has been a foundational framework for civilizations of many people for 1500 years. So one cannot speak about Islam is this and Islam of the other with the view of the last 10, 15, 20, 100 years, 200 years. Now throughout that history Muslims have been extremely diverse. And just simply to note a fact like there are 40 million Muslim Chinese. What do we know about them? I'm not saying we, I mean we the Muslims whether of the Middle East or of the sub-Saharan Africa region or any region. That we do not as much know as ourselves and our own community as much as we should and neither do others. So we should be sort of humble and really respectful of this extreme diversity which is a permanent feature of all human societies. And specifically regarding this audience here I think it is incoherent to speak about Islam and the West. It's incoherent. It does not make sense. There is no conflict or clash between Islam and the West. Islam is a world religion. The West is a geopolitical region. You can coherently speak of Islam and Christianity or Islam and Judaism or Islam and Hinduism as religions if you can do so with any coherence that is. But it is totally incoherent to speak about Islam and the West. Islam is a Western religion for those who study the field of religion. So it is really incoherent and again it is not productive. And for that reason I would emphasize to emphasize talking about Muslims and their history, their experiences, their context. That is where I think I will be focusing my remarks. And I will very much try to move away from simplification but I'm sorry that I will also slip into generalizations that I'm sure the scholars among us will find me at fault with. But the point for me is to try to highlight these points and keep them in mind especially when I slip into more careless language as I speak. I think a very significant aspect of the condition or the predicament of Muslims in the present era is what I call the post-colonial condition. And post-coloniality or the post-colonial condition is not I find often appreciated by Americans. Because for Americans, colonialism, for most Americans at least, not the Native Americans probably but for other Americans, colonialism is a positive experience. Some people may think of it as a style of furniture, style of architecture. And our colonial history, our colonial fathers and this and that but for most part of the world and most of humanity colonialism was an extremely traumatizing experience, a disruptive and destructive experience. And I do not speak only of course of foreign colonialism especially European colonialism. Often we have inherited and we have perpetuated internal colonialism among ourselves and as a Sudanese I acknowledge that to be true. But the point is that to think of the post-colonial condition, the reality of how Muslim societies today are post-colonial even those which were not formally colonized like Saudi Arabia or Iran or Turkey. The post-colonial condition is a socio-economic political phenomenon that we can study and understand and that we know applies equally across the world from Latin America to Southeast Asia to other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. So it is that sense and for that I think that what is a critical issue here is that Muslims have come to live with the European conception of the state. And a European conception of law and it's confusion regarding the nature of the state as we have it today and the nature of law as we have it today is really underlying the tension and the confusion about Sharia as I will try to explain. But we do have this post-colonial condition in which underdevelopment, poverty, lack of weak institutions are shared experiences and shared phenomena that we can consider in understanding the predicament of specific Muslim societies and communities. A phenomenon we talk about democratization, we talk about human rights protection, we talk about constitutionalism and you can see part of Hawaii at least in my view most of Hawaii Muslims are having problems with that is not peculiar to Muslims and therefore we have to consider other factors in the process. I will be now looking more in terms of the notion of Islam, Sharia and law. I mean why do I say the future of Sharia? Because Sharia is not law and often in fact in American law schools as I teach of course in this I say Islamic law. But this is deeply misleading because Islamic law is not an accurate translation of the term Sharia. Sharia is a total normative system for Muslims. It governs every aspect from belief and religious doctrine and theology into where she practices into social etiquette. It's a comprehensive way of life but it's a normative, not illegal, frame for Muslims to live by. Now another feature that I will mention immediately is that Islam is not synonymous with Sharia either. So Sharia is not Islam.  That is Sharia is a product of history, of human understanding in history and it cannot conceptually be otherwise. Islam is a scriptural religion actually closer to Judaism than Christianity in that regard in terms of the relationship between the text and the doctrine. The Quran is the foundational text to which all Muslims accept myself. I accept as we believe as a final revelation of God subhanahu ta'ala, God to humanity through the Prophet Muhammad. And then the Sunnah of the Prophet which is the lifestyle, the example of the Prophet is the second primary source. In fact, although it is in terms of hierarchy of sources, it could be second to the Quran but in terms of substance and content, it by far exceeds the Quran in terms of its normative impact on how Muslim faith and tradition came to be articulated. But the point is that Islam as based in the Quran and Sunnah, first for us Muslims in subsequent generations as of today to know what the Quran is, is a product of human consensus. That is we believe the Quran to have been revealed by God but how do we know that what we read now as a Mus'haf is in fact what was revealed. It is the belief that this text was handed down from generation to generation for the last 1500 years among Muslims. So therefore the notion of human consensus is in fact critical to the possibility of having the Quran authenticated as the legitimate and authoritative text. And that applies equally to Sunnah, the Prophet's example which is also more problematic because it remained as an oral tradition for several generations before it was recorded. And the controversy about what is authentic or not authentic Sunnah continues among Muslims. But for me the point here is to emphasize consensus as not only an aspect of the evolution of Sharia and the origins and founding of Sharia as I will try to briefly explain but also as even regarding the scriptural sources themselves. The authority is in the human chain of consensus, intergenerational consensus I call it rather than simply because we don't have, it wasn't an attachment that we receive with an email that says this is the Quran. It is the fact that generation after generation of Muslims narrate and memorize and hand down the Quran. In fact the Quran is in its reading not in its text, from iqraqara from the recitation of it, not its text in the Arabic language and so on. But now when you come to the notion of Sharia my claim here is that for any religion to be relevant it has to be interpreted by human beings through their experiences and their human comprehension. So ironically or paradoxically religion ceases to be divine in order to be relevant to the human. It becomes secularized in the process of transforming and understanding it to live by it. It is not that it loses its transcendental divine aspect according to the belief of the believers but as far as we are concerned in this life there is no way to know the Quran except through our human understanding. There is no way to understand the sunnah except through our human interpretation of it. And how we invoke sunnah and how we code the Quran is our human judgment. That is why I make the claim that many Muslims may find to be heretical that Sharia is secular. It's a product of secular experience. This will be experience and cannot be otherwise. Because as far as the Quran may remain and there is a verse in the Quran I can cite for those who are familiar. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim ha'amim wa'l kitabu al-mubin. Inna ja'annaahu Quranan arabiyan la'allakum taqqilun. Wa innahu fi'umul kitabil adayna la'alliun haqqee. And to roughly translate is to say that we have revealed the Quran in the Arabic language for you to understand. But the essence of the Quran remains with the divine beyond human comprehension. But the point is that it is la'allakum taqqilun so that you understand that is the object of revealing the Quran in a human language. And it is a human language and therefore it's a product of history. And the understanding of it is a product of history. Now the propositions that I seek to promote through the project is the notion that Sharia has a future. In my mind there is no doubt about this. I'm not questioning in the least. In fact my whole object is to fulfill the future of Sharia. To secure the future, to promote the future of Sharia. But that can only be outside the framework of the state. So my claim is that Sharia is too important to be entrusted to the state. And to the claim of the state to be able to enforce it. Second proposition I will highlight and mention them briefly and then try to explain some of them. That Sharia remains contested and constantly evolving. It is not a stagnant, it is not a fixed understanding. Because if it is then it ceases to be relevant and it dies. So if you believe in the continuity of the relevance of Sharia we have to accept its possibility of constant evolution and transformation. According to our human needs. To the extent that Sharia responds to my needs it is relevant and it is valid. To the extent it is not relevant and it is not valid. But Sharia cannot be enforced by the state. By that I mean a Sharia principle ceases to be Sharia by the very act of enacting it as law. So the whole idea of enacting a statute as Sharia is a contradiction. By enacting it you are removing the quality of being Sharia because it becomes the political will of the state. And not the normative system of Islam. For that I am saying that the notion of an Islamic state is incoherent. The state cannot be religious. I am saying I make these wild claims and as I remind me of my overstate generalizations. My claim is that the notion of a religious state is incoherent and historically false. The state cannot be religious. The state does not have, it is not a human being who has a conscience and a belief sort of to be able to believe and to be religious in that sense. Now the claim is made of a state being religious but that does not make the claim valid because it is made. Specifically regarding Islamic societies my claim is that there has never been an Islamic state. Not a single day. That the state was always a political institution. If you speak of a state then you are talking about a political institution. And you cannot talk about a religious political institution in the sense that it cannot be a religion or be really affiliated with a religion in that sense. Now to say a state cannot be religious does not mean that every state is secular. I would like to believe or in one sense one can speak of every state because we tend to think of the secular as the opposite of religious. So if the state is not religious then it must be secular. In a sense that is true but it's confusing because we have to understand secularism or a secular state in a particular way and many states do not qualify for being secular states. So for that reason I say a state cannot be religious. One second point is that many states which by definition are not religious do not yet or may not be sufficiently secular states. And my project is to promote the secular state as an imperative of the possibility of being Muslim. I need a secular state to be Muslim because I can only be Muslim by choice. And the state can never coerce or enforce piety or nobody can in that sense. So in that sense I'm saying that the state is not religious by definition whether a state is secular enough or not remains to be seen and also to be contested. And this is something that we can struggle with. Now I'm not suggesting in the least that Sharia is to be relevant. In fact Sharia will remain a fundamental socializing force, a fundamental normative source and normative system for Muslims everywhere. A Muslim is bound to observe Sharia no matter what. Whatever else is going on we never cease to be responsible for upholding Sharia. But we can never do so except by choice voluntarily. And any coerced piety, coerced conformity is by definition not religious. It loses the quality of being Islamic. And for those who are Muslim or familiar with the term there is a fundamental notion of Nia that is intention. No act can be religiously valid except when intended as such and nobody can force intention. You may force me to go to the mosque to pray but if you do I pray to the state which forced me to go there not to God. I cannot wait to go except when I go into the mosque voluntarily or fast voluntarily. That's why what I mean by a need a secular state to be Muslim. So Sharia remains a normative ethical underpinning of social life and it will be a source of law and policy. But only when filtered and adopted through what I used to call public reason until this weekend we had this sort of workshop around the manuscript and the term public reason was seen to be problematic for what it evokes in Western liberal thought. Some thought it was good, some thought it was bad, some thought it was incoherent. So I think by the end of the meeting we resolved to call it civic or civil reason not public reason. And by civil reason I mean that no policy or law should be enacted or implemented by the state except when it is adopted through political constitutional institutions through a process of civil reason. By civil reason we mean that a process of giving reasons and the process of reasoning that is equally accessible to all citizens without reference to religious belief. So you cannot say enforce this because God said so. Because that's what you think or what you believe. I may disagree with that. If you want me to do so as a better of state policy or state law then you have to articulate reasons that are persuasive to me as a citizen without reference to my or your religious belief. I'm sure that many of you will appreciate the overlaps with notions of public reason. To be briefly here is to say that I don't like the notion of public reason partly also because it seeks to prescribe what is persuasive. It tends to, especially when political philosophers like Raoul and Habermas sort of go into these elaborations they tend to stipulate what people will find persuasive or not, what people will find. And by definition I think that is in fact a contradictory project. So I would rather leave it to people to decide what is persuasive. And it is not that it's going to be, obviously my hope is that it will be civil and not sort of religious doctrine that is invoked. But that is something that we achieve over time through a process of cultivating public discourse and securing public discourse. And for that I very much, and I learn from American constitutionalism and I also learn from the global tradition of human rights and citizenship. And those experiences all over the world are experiences by which we try to safeguard the space where people can debate the basis of public policy and legislation without coercion of insult. I think that this idea is really about the religious neutrality of the state meaning that the state should be neutral regarding religious doctrine. That is not to say the state should be hostile or supportive. It is just simply to be neutral. Neither privileging nor disadvantageing religious doctrine. The state should be the guardian of debate among the believers of the community into what the religious doctrine is but should not prescribe what that doctrine should be. Now obviously the notion of neutrality is beyond the human. That is we cannot be totally neutral. But we have to strive to be as far as the institutions that preserve our ability to believe what we wish to believe. In other words that the notions of constitutionalism, human rights and citizenship are pragmatic approaches to securing the neutrality of the state against the impulse of those who control the state to appropriate it to their own ends and so on. So it is a pragmatic ideal meaning that it's a process that we can engage in and try to promote. There is a paradox of course in what I'm saying because part of my proposition is that the state must be separated from religion institutionally. But religion cannot be separated from politics. That is the state and religion is a dangerous mix. But the state, I mean religion and politics are inseparable. You cannot have religion out of politics anywhere including in this country obviously. So here we are dealing with a paradox. How can we keep the state separate from religion in the reality of connectedness between religion and politics? And that is what I mean by negotiating these paradox through institutions like constitutionalism and so on. One of the ideas I use is to try to distinguish between politics and the state. Politics you might think of as the government of the day. Whereas the state is the continuity, the institutional continuity of the state functions and organs that transcend or hopefully transcend the dictates of the politics of the day. And we are struggling with this everywhere all the time. To the extent that every government seeks to appropriate including this one, meaning government of Georgia and government of the United States, will try to appropriate the state to its own political project. Our struggle as citizens is to deny that and to frustrate that effort. So the question is how can we keep sort of the state which is a political institution as institutionalized as possible though that it can transcend the politics of the day. Because to allow the government of the day to collapse the state into the politics of the day is a very dangerous, that is what authoritarianism is, that is what totalitarianism is. And therefore the struggle is to promote that possibility. Again there is another paradox or dilemma between morality and law. Where does morality end and law begin? Those are issues that I think people have to struggle with. Now if I may just to inject a point here and I do try to keep to the time that we agreed. In my belief the United States is more of an Islamic state than any state in the world that claims to be an Islamic state. By that I mean Saudi Arabia is not an Islamic state. Iran is not an Islamic state. Sudan is not an Islamic state and so on. Because to the extent that the state denies the right of Muslims to believe as they please or not to believe. And by the way, belief logically requires the possibility of disbelief. You cannot believe unless you can disbelieve, logically. So my claim is that to the extent that the United States is a secular state and that some of you of us may sort of dispute that at least sometimes in regarding some issues. But it is more of a secular state in the sense of a more of a state that is neutrally regarding religious doctrine than any of the states where Muslims are a majority and claim to be an Islamic state. Or not claim an Islamic state. That is globally speaking, that's why I say to be an American give me more possibility of being Muslim than being a citizen of many of these states where the state is not neutrally regarding religious doctrine. But of course I'm talking about the state as such as an institution. But the politics, the society and so on you will have issues with that but that is not my point for now at least. Now coming to closing to say that my obligation in promoting this project is to be persuasive. And there is a question of my obligation to be persuasive and my ability to be persuasive. Because my project is lost it is meaningless if it is not persuasive to Muslims in the first place and to others who can support Muslims in their struggle. But the obligation and the desire is not necessarily consistent or similar the same as the ability to be persuasive. I strive to be persuasive regarding the legitimacy of my argument. Meaning that I try to promote and that's why I call it secularism from an Islamic perspective. So I try to present an Islamic argument for secularism and I think I try to outline that. That I'm promoting this as a Muslim in order to be Muslim. My claim, my challenge to so-called Islamic fundamentalism or an Islamic state or the enforcement of Sharia by the state is from an Islamic perspective. I say this denies my possibility of being a Muslim. Now many of the ideas I'm saying and that is good are not totally new obviously. But neither are they totally accepted at least among Muslims. That we do have an intellectual history that is very rich in which all of these ideas have been debated by Muslim scholars thousands of years ago, 800 years ago. People like Ibn Rushd, Al Farabi, Al Ghazali and the Mu'tazila tradition and many others. So these ideas and during our weekend of discussions we had several Muslim scholars who kept citing to us that but so and so said so 800 years ago or 700 years ago. My point is that is fine I will seek that to fortify my argument but for that to be relevant today it has to be translated in not only in terms of language but in terms of experience so that it has coherence in state societies which are post-colonial societies. And these ideas profound as they are are little known, little appreciated among Muslims. And until we do then we cannot just simply recite those ideas as a way out of our predicament when in fact they are not. Now when I said translate because I mean that there has been a fundamental epistemological transformation and shift. Muslim societies in the post-colonial are very different, drastically different from Muslim societies historically. Now we are much more urbanized by far. I mean that Cairo, Karachi, 17, 16 million people in a city. That is unprecedented in Muslim history, even in smaller towns. So the scale of demographics, social factors, industrialization, urbanization and education. Those are fundamental shifts in our societies. That's why we need to translate Ibn-e-Rujd or any of or Ghazali into a coherent language for today's Muslim in relation to their issues, not in abstractions. The global context of the territorial state, I would like to call it rather than the nation state because the nation is very problematic idea. But territorial state is coherent. So the United States is a territorial state. It's not a nation state. There is no United States nation. Well there is of course a myth that there is a nation but it is not true with all the respect. And this is true everywhere. The notion of nation is very problematic. But inherently authoritarian and hegemonic. Because what happens is that some privileged cultural group will claim the name of the nation and speak in the name of the nation. But anyway that is maybe a side issue. But my point is that my discourse has to be challenging but also has to be accessible. And there have to be conducive conditions. Meaning that locally and globally the conditions have to be conducive to a free discourse and dialogue. Now here I come to conclude to say I do not intend to offend. I seek to challenge with all due respect and humility. And I also claim that there is no point in my coming here and bringing you all out and thank you for being here. If I'm going to tell you exactly what you already agree with or accept. So let me finish with upsetting some of us I hope. I believe that if I'm not challenging and challenged I'm not relevant. So that is the spirit in which I am saying this. My point is what what can Americans do. And of course I mean they can understand that I do have very strong views on what's going on globally now especially regarding the United States and its foreign policy. But I'm trying to be more objective hopefully or also more reaching out in conversation. Again I recall that I'm here honoring my privilege that I'm privileged to be addressing you and I would not waste this privilege by telling you what you already accept and agree with. And I also talk about our privilege all of us in this room probably who are American that this is a high privilege. What do we owe for it. What do we owe humanity for the privilege of being Americans. But my point was also pragmatic. It is not only to appeal to your moral sensibility but also to appeal to our and your pragmatic needs and considerations. This is what we need to do and this is what we ought to do. And there is no difference between the two. My point one point is that the dichotomy between so-called foreign policy and domestic policy is collapsing very fast. And 9-11 if it has one of the main points that it made the silver lining probably is to bring an awareness that there is no distinction between foreign policy and domestic policy. What you do abroad will come home and what we do at home will go abroad. So that is one point. My question is about democratic accountability especially for foreign policy. And my claim is that with all due respect the government of the United States is not democratically accountable to the people of the United States. And no government will ever surrender to being accountable. Every government has to be brought to accountability. It is not going to come to accountability voluntarily. And we betray our obligations and rights and privilege as citizens by failing to affirm and assert our right to hold our government accountable. And we have to realize that a lot of myths keep playing out in the media in our popular political discourse to lull us into the belief that we are in fact holding our government accountable. But are we really doing so? And there are issues I'm sure that you are aware of them very much in the news today and these days which will bring this point home. When is this accountability taking place? In what ways is it sustained consistently and consistently? Basically my conclusion therefore it is our human agency our responsibility that makes all the difference. That is there is nothing good or bad that happens except through our human agency. Nothing good or bad happens except through our human agency. Of course that earthquakes don't happen or tsunamis do not happen. But I mean as far as human affairs are concerned whatever is good or bad is by virtue of a human being doing or failing to do. And by the way failing to do is standing on the sidelines and this claiming responsibility will not, it is a choice. Failing to make a choice is a choice. Failing to act is action. And there are always consequences. There are always consequences. And the consequences do not come according to our wishes or desires. They come to the nature of our action. And when we defy people's dignity and violate their sovereignty and colonize them. And I have to say this as I said I do not mean to insult but I need to challenge. The United States is colonizing Iraq today as we speak and since March of 2003. Colonialism in the 19th century meaning of the term. Because colonialism is to seize sovereignty by military conquest without legal justification. To seize sovereignty over land and territory and population. And that we did by military conquest and that we did without legal justification and that we do not have. So whether for a day or an hour or is still continuing the United States is the colonial power over Iraq. Now my point is the complexity of the situation well taken and respected. The point is that we cannot really claim to uphold international legality. We cannot uphold international law. We cannot claim to uphold human rights. When we act with such flagrant disregard for the most fundamental principles. As they are enshrined in our own constitution and are they enshrined in our own political culture. For that I say and for that I conclude by challenging us all of us to be compassionate, to be understanding but to be principled. Most of all to be principled and to realize that whatever we do there are consequences. And the consequences are not what we wish for but it is in the nature of our actions. For me to be able to deliver this message to Muslims and to persuade Muslims to be persuasive. I need you to help me uphold these principles globally especially when they are at risk. People's will and commitment are not tested in normal times. They are tested in extraordinary times. If we fail our principles in our hardship that is where it counts the most. Not when we uphold them in our leisure. Thank you very much. That was wonderful. Water if you would like. Thank you Professor Adnan. You have challenged us. You have spoken words of passion and compassion. You have spoken words of grace and of freedom. One of the theologians who has taught me a great deal besides yourself was a German pastor in the 1930s, a pacifist, who was wrestling with the concept of what he was called to do. And in a little book he wrote that in his tradition, my tradition, God became human, not that we could become gods but that we could become more fully human. And that indeed is how I take your remarks today that we indeed are called to be human. Thankfully Professor Anayim has given us permission to have a time of questions. We will have about 20 to 25 minutes of open questions. We have mics. I ask you to come to one of the mics if you're able. And if you're not able to get to a microphone that we have seated, please raise your hand and we'll bring you a portable mic. So the floor is now open for questions. Professor Anayim, my name is Ekhter Abdullah Najwar. I have been in the United States for 64 years. I hail from Lebanon. I am a Druze Muslim. I grew up as a Druze, which is an Islamic sect. But we are also castigated in the Islamic world because a thousand years ago the Druze who constituted about a million population in Lebanon, Syria and Israel and Jordan have a thousand years ago freed slaves, gave liberty and equality to women, and said that separation of, there is no separate church from the country. I wonder if you'd like to make a comment on that. I think the point, as I said in my opening remarks, I said I seek and claim the right to challenge every monopoly, whether a monopoly of to define who's a Muslim or a property to define who's an American. If I'm an American citizen then I have a right to define and to seek to contribute to defining what that means. And if I affirm myself as a Muslim I have every right to do so. And obviously that does not overlook the fact that this is, and of course if it wasn't happening I wouldn't say it. That is if people are not claiming to monopolize what it is to be a Muslim I wouldn't need to make the point. The point is precisely in confrontation of the reality that many people seek to define others as excluded from a community that they affirm their membership of. And my point is that I also, you have an Emory International Journal which you have in the reading. You see that I say I celebrate heresy. For me heresy is vitally important for any tradition, for any religious or other tradition, whether even ideological or political. The point is that every orthodoxy is started as a heresy. Not every heresy makes it into orthodoxy but there is no orthodoxy that was not heresy. No orthodoxy that was not a heresy. So it is to heresy that we all, all that we believe in. How can we do without it? So heresy is not a shame or it is not a disgrace. It is a badge of honor. I seek to be a heretic and to be responsible for my heresy. So for the dominant Sunni communities of the Middle East to whom the Druze are heretical, the Druze should not feel inferior for that and challenge the claim of those who seek to demonize them for branding them as heretics. That is why we both need a secular state. That's why you and I are here. Because here we can be who we wish to be but we have to struggle to keep it so. So don't take me wrong in the sense that it is always going to be fine here. It's only good as long as we keep it so. So I agree with you completely. Thank you sir. Can you hear me? First of all, my name is Amir and I'm a physician here. A few comments and a few questions I have. I don't think Islam as history was ever a non-secular in its institution. Starting from Prophet's life, he went to Medina. He developed a secular state. He has Jewish and Christians in an agreement that we will fight together. We will protect together. When he came to 700 years ago to Spain, the Sultan of Kurtaba, his private physician was Dr. Mimone Day's secular state. People are living there happily, Jewish and Christians.  Majority of the population was not Muslim. It was Hindus. Islam as an institute has never been a non-secular. Our current states, as you say, post-colonized Muslim states, are whatever they are. They are only for political reasons. And we don't have to... Everybody knows in Iran or in Saudi Arabia, I was born in one of the middle states and I know what's been happening there. I came here seven years ago and I have really learned what Islam really is. And the whole credit goes to this west, which I agree with you, is more Islamic than the whole hemisphere on the eastern side. One, two, you kind of stated in the initial part of your speech, if I understood it wrongly, that's my mistake, but you kind of questioned the authenticity of the Qur'anic versions. We have sent down the book and we are the protectors as in rough translation. It would be shortcoming on human understanding of what human mind is today that might not be able to understand and interpret the Qur'anic wisdom and statements. Qur'an is not a book of ordainment. It's a book of similarities, symbolism, science. People have made many connotations from today's scientific discoveries from the Qur'anic book 1400 years ago. So that was human mind's limitation, not the limitation from the Qur'anic message. And as a Muslim, I do not think Sunnah or the teachings of Prophet peace be upon him has any superceedings on Qur'anic statement because Muslim scholars everywhere, they might question the authenticity of a hadith or the saying of Prophet, but they never have questioned what Qur'an says. It may be different of timing, different of environments or they have to be forced to make some different opinion on, again, political reasons, not Islam as what it teaches us. I think that's it, sorry. Okay. Thank you. On the first point, of course, I don't think it's not very productive to go into this context about Kortuba or Medina or this and that as if raising them as high examples of... But then we tend to overlook several centuries of our history conveniently or spots where they were bright. The point is Muslims are like all the other human beings have been good and bad, they have been good times, bad times and oppressive states or societies are not oppressive states. So it is not the sort of a contest of whose civilization is superior because I think that is really a waste of energy and the privilege of what we have here. But it's a question of what are the fundamental problematics in the conception and understanding and so that we can, whatever it is that we have we can improve and so on. That the profit state in Medina, I say, is too exceptional to be relevant. It's too exceptional to be relevant. Meaning that if you believe to have a state in which a profit is a ruler, then that's not comparable to any other state. It's not even a state in any coherent sense. From a Muslim perspective, of course, for the Jews and Christians of Medina, it was a state with which they had good times and bad times in terms of the charter of Medina and the struggles and that people like Gordon Nubian in the room, I wouldn't presume to speculate further. But the point is that from other perspectives it was a state for a Muslim, it was exceptional in the sense of being ruled by the prophet to be really in any other sense comparable to other states. But from Abu Bakr, definitely. But the point is that what I said earlier that a non-religious state does not necessarily mean a secular state in the sense we mean today. So the state was not religious, but doesn't mean that it was secular. It was partisan to a religion and to a doctrine within that religion. And a lot of suffering among Muslims like the Druze we heard or others who suffered for that partisanship of the state. So the state was not neutral regarding religious doctrine as we would like it to be today. But the possibility of a neutral state is here now and we need to protect it and uphold it and to live by it, Muslims and others. Regarding the Quran, the Quran verse says, meaning that we have revealed the Quran and we are protecting the Quran. But how? I mean, just read it, but the question is how is God protecting the Quran through the human? My point was to say that what we now accept as the Quran is to ask the Quran by virtue of the fact we accept it as such. There is no other way of verifying or vindicating the authenticity of the Quranic text except through this chain of narration generation after generation. So it is the Quran, it is recited and it is in its recitation generation to generation that it is preserved among the community of believers. But not by virtue of that you have an original certified text. We don't have a text sitting somewhere which is certified and stamped as this is originally compared in other texts to it. It is the fact that we recited generation after generation, that is how it is preserved. But my point about that is not to challenge the authenticity but to emphasize the centrality of human agency. Regarding the Quran itself in the sense of how we come to accept it to be regarding the Sunnah, regarding what it has come to be and accepted by us as well as our interpretation of it. So that is how central the human agency of the Muslim believer is. Good evening, sir. One question. You had mentioned before that Sharia would be both a socializing factor and a socialization amongst Muslim communities earlier in your speech. And you particularly noted that the state was a geopolitical institution. Yet another conceptualization of the role of the state is a forum for socioeconomic realities of a community. If Sharia is part of the fundamental socialization and social identity of a people and the state serves as both facilitator and medium for the socioeconomic realities of a community, how can a state possibly not institutionalize certain aspects of its fundamental culture in particularly in this age of globalization? No, the state can and do. But my point was not to say that normative ethical cultural principles and practices and institutions are not relevant to state policy and law. My question is not to claim them to be Sharia as such. Meaning that if the state said we want to prohibit interest banking, someone proposed, of course the state does not act. I mean, we say the state, it's all someone who does. It's a human being, it's a political party, it is a leadership. So someone proposed that let us prohibit interest banking. I would say fine if you say why without saying because it's haram, that is because it's religiously a sin. So yes, our social institutions, economic and political institutions will reflect our religious values and other values. Religion, however you define it, is not the exclusive source of our identity and the foundation of our socialization, our social experience. But it is a significant part of it for some people, for those who happen to be believers. But those who we never agree on what it is that they believe in. And that is the point about how we need to keep the state neutral precisely because of our tendency to disagree. And because some of us would like to impose our will through the institution of the state, we seek to appropriate the state. The only check is for the rest of us to say no to that. That's why it is constant vigilance. That makes it possible. So I'm not denying that sharia will remain, but for me, as I said, it remains contested and evolving. It is not a particular given understanding of sharia as fixed, take it or leave it. Because whatever it is, it is some human understanding of it. That's what I meant by saying that sharia is secular. I'm denying the claim that someone has access to a divine understanding of sharia that is not subject to human agency of that person. If it is your agency, it could be mine too. And that's why I need a secular state to secure my access to being an authoritative theology, not authoritarian theology. That Frank mentioned earlier. Yes, sir, over here. My name is Kemal Korujou, and my question is I'm trying to understand the type of government that you were proposing or you were trying to describe. Perhaps I'm projecting my own opinion on your speech, but I wanted to clarify this, that to establish the equality and the freedom that you were talking about, it seems like the government has to be a weak government, not a strong government, as far as its involvement in the society. And if it is a strong government, then we are not really talking about equal rights for everybody, about equal limitations for everybody. If I guess from your accent, you know, we have, in fact, a manuscript that we mentioned, that Frank mentioned earlier, which is on our website, has a chapter about Turkey, the contradictions of authoritarian secularism. That is, for a secular state, for a state that claims to be secular, which is undemocratic or authoritarian, it is not secular to the extent of its authoritarianism and lack of democratic accountability and so on. Now, I did not seek to try to describe a type of government. I was talking about a type of state, and I did try to distinguish between a state and a government. The government is a reflection of the politics of the day, and the state is the continuity of institutional authority of the state beyond the government of the day. And that is a tension I try to acknowledge, meaning that it is not going to be, it's not sort of programmed, you can say, okay, here's the state and here's the government, and sit back and wait for them to work together. That we have to keep the state, the government from taking over the state. Now, I'm talking about the state that is neutral institutionally regarding religious doctrine. The government will be as weak or as strong as authoritarian or not, as we make it. So my point is how to keep the ability of people to make and change their government into a weak or strong. I tend to be cautious about the notion of weak government because that implies lack of social responsibility for social services. I need, in fact, a strong government and a strong state, not a minimalist state, because there are certain segments of the population who need services and protection. But so long as our system is democratic and constitutional and citizenship human rights respecting, then we can fix whatever is wrong with our state or our government. But to the extent that our systems, our institutions are weak, then even a weak government, the Sudan government is a weak government. It's an extremely problematic government for the people of Sudan. So a weak government is not necessarily a good government and a strong government is not necessarily a bad government. It is what it does, not how strong it is or not in that way. I don't think that makes sense. Hi, I'm Rabia Ben-Halim, a 1L student here. I have a few questions. My first one, and I know it means any scholar, but it seems to me that your main contention is that the state shouldn't legislate Sharia because then they will be able to control your Nia. But I guess where I'm kind of confused, it seems to me that the state can legislate your action, but they can't legislate your intention. So you may still go to the measure did because you want to pray towards Allah, not necessarily because the state has legislated it. So that's my sort of first question, is I see how it could limit your ability to be Muslim, but I don't think that it negates your ability to be Muslim.  And I guess looking at it from my perspective, it seems to me that one of the bigger issues rather than just that the state legislates through Sharia is that the state funds the Sheykh and the imams and also appoints them. So you have state control over the leadership of the Islam within those states. So I was wondering if you could speak to that issue. And then my final question is just, you were mentioned that you see the Sharia as being living in vibrant and having a future and how do you see that evolving and what actors you see taking place in that? On the last point, I see you.  That is exactly what I'm seeking to challenge, to say that let us not underestimate our authority. An remark I made during our workshop, I said that religious authority is in the eyes of the beholder, meaning that anybody is authoritative to me only to the extent I concede authority to him or her. So it is, I am the source of authority and authorization, not the claimant of the authority. So the ulama, the imams, the state, it's only to the extent that I concede.  Then no state can be authoritative or a religious leadership to be authoritative. And I really also feel that, you know, if I can make a generalization, I say that Islam is radically democratic and bureaucratic, theologically. But Muslims have always tended to be very hierarchical and authoritarian sociologically. Meaning that we often say that there is no church in Islam, but in fact we make it even though it is not there. I mean, sort of clerical hierarchy and authority. So the problem is how to dispel this sociological dependency, which is ironic because we never abdicate responsibility even when we abandon or fail to uphold it. We are responsible even for our failure to be responsible. So in that sense, I think that the point is that when you say the state can limit my freedom to be a Muslim but not deny the possibility to convert, why should it do any of that either? So my point is that keep the state out of it. Whatever it is, it can neither force me to go to the mosque or not to go to the mosque. For me it is as offensive and as problematic from my Islamic point of view in my conviction to be forced to go to the mosque as it is to be denied to go to the mosque, to try to go to the mosque. I must go voluntarily or stay out voluntarily. That's why for me this belief is critical to belief. I cannot logically believe. Belief has to be a choice. What is the other to believe? This belief. So those are the ideas I can say that the question is not to allow the state to do any of that neither to force me to go with or without conviction or to prevent me from going or not going with or without conviction. That is my business, not the state business. And the need to challenge sort of the vibrancy of Sharia is very much on you. It is never going to happen except when you make it so because that is what I ended with in terms of emphasizing our agency. Time for one more question. Go ahead, sir. I'm Naveed Sheikh. I'm a 1L here. I actually have two questions but hopefully they're quick for you. The first has to do, I was hoping, I was curious to hear your thoughts on the concept of bedah or innovation. Certainly Islam started out as heresy when it started but throughout its history there's been quite a tension between it as an orthodoxy and all the other heresies that have come up as it's developed historically. One of the arguments always made is that's bedah or that's a bedah meaning innovation. That's against the tradition or the notions that were first developed at the time that Islam was created. And this can apply to things, political concepts or even to social or just the customs you have in your day-to-day life. So I was hoping to hear you kind of talk on that. And then my second question is recently in Iraq and Afghanistan they've created constitutions for these nations with democratic as they claim. But they've also incorporated a lot of Islamic or Sharia notions into them. And I was just wondering if you've gotten a chance to look at them and kind of comment on how they've tried to incorporate those too based on your ideas of state versus government. On the first point I thought I did talk about heresy as critical to that every orthodoxy started as a heresy. So I do not accept the claim that when someone says this is a bedah, this is an innovation. I say who speaks.  To me that is not conclusive. I will not accept it unless I'm persuaded that it is. And also in terms of bedah as innovation what is our life is to be without innovation. Imagine if we are still, how would you define innovation and where would you draw the line? And so people who use internet and satellite telephone are talking about innovation and bedah. That is an innovation, that is a bedah. It is not only invoking notions of democracy of consensus of all of those. Those ideas can always be for someone a bedah. So my point is that heresy is critical. That every orthodoxy started as a heresy. Ibn Taymiyyah who is the sort of the orthodoxy of the Islamists of today was deemed to be a heretic and imprisoned for it. So if it wasn't for the heresy of Ibn Taymiyyah we wouldn't have had bin Laden and we wouldn't have had the Wahhabi doctorate in Saudi Arabia. So the most so-called orthodox, the most so-called authoritarian traced their origin to a bedah, to a heresy. I'm not saying that every heresy is right because I have the right to judge what is right and what is wrong but I'm saying I would rather keep the possibility of bedah of heresy and keep my right to judge it than to give someone the right to suppress it in the claim or in the name of suppressing bedah. That is why I need a secular state to protect my right to be a heretic. Of course when I am a heretic I don't believe myself to be a heretic and that is a point. In fact I believe to be more true to the doctrine than those who call me a heretic. But that possibility I need to keep it in the state and that's what I'm talking about. On the question of constitutions of Iraq and Afghanistan these are not constitutions. A constitution that starts by saying Islam is a religion of the state is a contradiction in terms. A constitution has nothing to do with a cannot name Islam or any religion as a religion of the state. The state cannot have a religion. And any constitution that embodies principles of sharia in an understanding that discriminates against women, discriminates against non-Muslims is a contradiction in terms. The essence of constitution is fundamental rights of equal citizenship of men and women, believers and non-believers. Any constitution that felt to uphold that not only in a bill of rights but in every aspect of the constitution is not a constitution worthy of the name. Of course people will call it a constitution. It's a capital C and they will publish it on websites. But to me that's what I look for. If you identify the state with a religion you are out of the game as the Americans would say. If you discriminate against any citizen and by my book any human being on the grounds of religion or gender or race and so on then it is not a constitution. With all due respect the so-called constitution of Afghanistan is not a constitution. And the so-called constitution of Iraq is not a constitution. But this can be part of the process of building because constitution making is a process not an event. And the American constitution was a time when it was not a constitution and obviously when this constitution permitted its slavery it was not a constitution. Now we celebrate 250 years or 200 whatever years of the American constitution. To my mind it is progressively becoming a constitution but it was not at the beginning. If it took a constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote all the time that this country and this constitution did not give the women the right to vote was not a constitution to that extent.  And the constitutional system and order that did not secure fundamental civil rights and we are still waiting for that to continue to happen. That is the nature of it. We are never passed the goal, what do you call it? It's never over until it is over in the sense that we pass on to the next wave. Thank you very much. Thank you. Professor Anayim has graciously agreed to join us all for a reception. I thank all of you for coming today. I thank the Curry family for making this possible. I thank you Professor Anayim for your words of grace your words of wisdom, your words of challenge, your words of passion. And I pray that we may all learn from Professor Anayim as we go forward. One minor request. At the back we've got little forms that would be helpful to us in the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. If you would fill that out just real quickly to tell us how you heard about this event as we attempt to market and get this word out in future weeks, months and years to come. Thank you very much. The preceding program is copyrighted by Emory University.


Very good morning to you, and thanks for joining us on today's edition of the run-up. My name is Nyam Gul Aghaji, and today we'll be looking at various issues like, as usual, we'll be talking to the managing director of, okay, let me start with what he was before now. The one-time commissioner for comments in Kano State, now the managing director of Dara Dryport. He will be talking to us about politics in Kano. You know what it is. He's the leading governor who is of the ruling party, but also having a presidential candidate who seems to be the fourth person whenever they are calling the major political parties and people who are really making waves in the political space, leading up to 2023. I'm talking about Rabiou Kankwasso. So we'll be talking with the MD Dara Dryport to tell us more about the politics back home there in Kano State. That will be honorable Ahmed Rabiou, like I said. We'll also be looking at another very turning issue today. We just had the music, we woke up to the news that Nupeng might be going on strike in these hard times where the bus drivers have gone on strike for the next one week, things might be a little bit more difficult for the people who do not own cars by themselves, and now Nupeng is threatening to go on strike again because of some issues that need to be addressed and have not been addressed over the years. We'll have someone talk with us today, and his name is Mr. Obarro. Obarro will be telling us what the issues are and possibly what needs to be done for the matter to be solved so that some of us will not have to go through all that. But because even if you own a car and Nupeng goes on strike, you will still be affected.  You are an employer of labor and then your people may not be able to come to work. So it affects everybody. Then we also have a governor who has always been on the news talking about Governor Nyesom Wieke. The latest statement he made was that reverse state is not decided yet. Who to vote for to become Nigeria's president? Wieke is PDP. Reverse state is predominantly PDP and a little bit of APC because we had the minister for transportation coming from there, Rotimi and Meichi. But because of the problems that we are seeing in the PDP, Wieke has been at loggerheads with his principle or his supposed principle, Alhadyatikua Bubaka and the chairman of the party, Yocha Ayu. So right now because of that problem, Wieke is saying they are not decided yet who is going to be the person to vote for to become president. So we are looking at maybe some alignments and others happening before 2023. But we will have someone not from reverse state who will be talking with us and I am talking about Mr. Achike Chude. He will also be joining us on the program to comment on what Wieke just said. But let's start with our first guest, Mr. Amit Rabu, managing director of Daurah Dryport. Hello Mr. Rabu and welcome to the program. Good morning and thank you for having me. Okay, well, Karnu has a presidential candidate of a different party and a sitting governor of a different party. How is that working out in Karnu right now? I have not got you quite in full but I think I have a good idea of what you are thinking here. Karnu has been a political, if you like, nucleus for not only northern Nigeria but we can find ourselves to say for the country, for the gifts that God has given us of being the most popular state and also most cosmopolitan where every Nigerian finds a home and the also the gift of a people that are really positively politically disposed, able to take decisions on the basis of good reasoning, not on short-sighted, some kind of small group interest. From the time we had the gift of Malan in Karnu and the rest of the Dillongian to government at the center and the self-development to the recent one, if you like, that happened of the context of our own son of Blaise Maware, Alec Bashir Othman Trofa and also of the area that could come forward by the land of the other who won Karnu and the son of Karnu lost in Karnu. So the term of people are politically conscious and they make their calculations positive and to start on that trend is to mention, if you like, to remember that before anybody stood in favor of the Asuaji Bola Ahmed Tillibu, our governor had strongly stood in promotion of the candidates of his Excellency Senator Bola Ahmed Tillibu as the most preferred candidate for the Nigerian presidency and these are all special gifts that you find only in Karnu and so the presence of candidates on another party seeking presidency in Karnu does not actually in any way change the dynamics in Karnu. The Karnu people are positively deposed and will do what is right at every time and that is why anything you look at when it comes to the interplay, you find that our people in Karnu are very conscious of making the right decision and boldly coming out to attack it. Honorable Rabu, the movement of the presidential candidate of the NNPP Rabu Kankoso known as the Kankosia, we've heard that it's a very strong movement as far as Karnu is concerned. How are you contending with that? How are you able to tackle that because you're still selling the candidacy of the APC presidential flag bearer Bola Ahmed Tillibu. So how are you trying to win Karnu from a Karnu song to someone else? You can be rest assured that for as far as we are concerned there is no Kankosia at the moment. If you take the individual that is the figurehead and then you look at him and say where are the luteinants who made the name Tic? You find that they now belong to totally several different groups. For instance, he's currently, my governor, Ablai Ubar Kankoji, belongs to the APC and you can be rest assured that he has pulled with him more than half of Kankosia. The former and the founder of Kankosia, they call that the former secretary to the candidate government, Rabu Suleiman Bici, has moved, is with Kankoji now and virtually a lot of the heads are with Kankoji and then some of the also Kankosia elements are in the PDT and quite a number of other elements of the Kankosia are also in the PRT and in a few other parties. So what is left with the leader of the Kankosia movement or group if you like, less than perhaps 20% of the people that really made him to really be that attractive. So that can also make him that strong. So as far as APC is concerned, the party and NPT is actually not a party to see us. If there is any content that it is not an NPT to the APC. We are very comfortable with the kind of candidates we have put ahead. We have brought from a deputy governor, a sub-independent governor of the National Republic of Nagyanduji, the Nationalist of Gaona, and we also have got a very popular politician, Murtala Sela-Garu, the running mate and the two of them today if you do any opinion poll, you will find that they are not only at the top, but the gap between them and those who follow them is definitely a very big one. So we are so comfortable that we have got the right candidate, not only at the states and he says there are people that have a tinnable, but in every other sphere we have made the deliberate attempt to make sure that internal democracy in our party dictated the terms of our activities. So we do not have any clear from NPT. That's why I told you the story of a man, who was also, at his time, a really popular person, but despite of his being kind of a person, the other kind of people at your left came in and won the election in kind of ahead of the election, so kind of people are not exposed to just a term. No, the conclusion is that by us all, you see, is that the right place to go? And do we take the right position? Okay, the names you have dropped, very big names of the, forgive the word, of the old stock. And a lot of people have said the 2023 election will largely be decided by the youths. What are you doing to galvanize these youths to be on your side, to make sure that the 2023 is in your favor? Because they may not be very much in support of the older generation, so to speak. Our leader, the governor of Gandugia, has always been conscious of the strategic role of the youth and women. And even in his processes of empowerment and bringing him together for inclusiveness, he has had special programs for the youth and women, who are actually the largest segment of the working public. Even all those involved in the film industry, those that are involved in the anti-tuals, and literally all sides where the youth are engaged, have been adequately captured in the cycle of inclusiveness, so that they don't only form parts of the movement, but they are empowered to be comfortable and to be attracted to work and ensure sustainable good governance that has been absorbed by the government of Gandugia. Some people say that the politics in the North is for the Nords. Not in us. That's what the feel. Not in us feel that way. And here we are having... No, I have not got you. Can you come again? Sorry. Some people feel... One of the things for the North is... Okay, let me rephrase. Some people feel that when there is a very strong candidate from the North, the Nords will never leave their own to vote for someone from somewhere else. And that's why some of the candidates, even we have heard them campaigning and saying that it is not for North. So... Okay, I think that's a very unfair judgment. Those people who know us, if they had been to Camel, in my introduction, I said Camel is the most popular state. Camel is also the most cosmopolitan state. The only state that Ramchawda would ask is Lagos. In terms of cosmopolitan leadership, it's position. We are people that the moment you come in from anywhere in the world, you drop your bag in the hotel or in the market, you are welcome and you are made to feel at home, and you remain at home and make comfortable. We are not people that have those narrow considerations. That is why even Lagos today prides itself with the contributions to become everybody by our 2000s. I leave God and go to it. I'm just going to drive you. These two Nigerians that have settled and played the attentiveness in Lagos and other parts of the South West and the South South and the Nords themselves, they have not, if they have any matches, they don't tend to be limited. They will not have gone outside their home. So we are great people and the nature of, the hospitality nature of our people is the reason why today every tribe in Nigeria has at least 10% of its population, residents in Camel, doing business in Camel, living comfortably in Camel. If by any means we have that limitation, we wouldn't have voted a viola against our own son, but she was not too far. Both of them have less money. We voted a viola. They are not far away. I mean all the interactions with the tribe in the past, if you look at them, you find that the Nords and I, it's a very liberal passion generally. And the next thing I was up on the Nords section, from the Nords West or from the Nords East, that is nothing like all Nords that some people try to create it. To make some people feel they are not Nords, or some are more Nords than others. We are Nords and our attitude is generally very receptive, very hospitable, very kind, very considerate, and people that have been played through a large population, by virtue of which you must ensure the existence and the maintenance of the rule of law. And that is why you find generally, except for the challenges are coming, we are the most feasible zone in the entire country. And therefore our political position is also a positive one and a good one. Okay, just a quick one before we wrap it up. If you say Kano is a cosmopolitan place, it's populated and whatever you have used to describe Kano, it also means that there are people of various faiths in Kano state. Now, one of the issues that people have been grumbling about the APC is the presentation of two candidates or the presidential candidate and his running mate of the same faith. So how are the Christians and other faiths in Kano taking this? Or if they are taking it well, what did you do to bring them to your fold? Beautiful. Now, the problem over Kano just from his first day in office, the fact even before he became the governor, when he was deputy governor, had been in charge of making sure that there was a peaceful coexistence among different tribes and religious groups and other social interests. And when he became governor, he put that in a very important task, which he really put a lot of energy on. They had all the meetings with all the different Christian groups, with different Islamic sects and all those, and trying to cover that and let everybody turn him below and give everybody his right in the staff. Now, the issue of the Muslim-Muslim ticket, things do happen as it tells the circumstance. We are a evolving democracy. Time will come that when you ask the name of the individual, they are not concerned about his religion because your concern will be his capacity to deliver. Now, the team that we have now in the form of Bola and Hajji Katchin is a child of circumstance. It came in the way it did, not because that is a threat for our Christian brothers or anything, but because politics is always a game. You look at the catchment. You look at the scheme that when you are going to sell, and try, you have to imagine, how catchment you are contributing to sell the project of ACC. If you have somebody, there are a large number of brothers, Christians all over the place, you could have somebody even better than him, but in the scheme of party politics, it is not the competence of the individual that qualifies him to be appointed, but it is belonging. If you do not have any approach, touch individual, or if there are other challenges going in the future, then when you come in, and the selection points to a person that comes in to be able to support the ticket to him, then that has to happen. So we have taken charge all the time of our Christian brothers around, and communicated with them, and they also have seen that the commitment of Gacchia Chetima is not coming on a religious ground.  It was never decided and deliberate to bring the two Muslims together. And since that happened before, Juan Artiona was on a Muslim Muslim ticket, and he won. You know how it has happened? He won the election, but it was the junta issue, the factor of alignment. But the key issue is that people elected them, and we believe, even on the leader of the campaign, it's a Christian. It's a Christian, the director of the Gola Gacchia ticket, ATC, is a Christian. And the Christians are very prominently established in the scheme, and they know they are respected, and they know the coincidence of a black bearer and his roommate, a coincidence of selection. And they are born out of so many actions that take place. And therefore, we do not believe there is any challenge imposed by that. We believe the elections will come. Our Christian brothers and the Muslim brothers will work together, and even those who do not have any faith will all work as Nigerians and ensure that the job, the month for the job, the most complicated individual, the Abola Ahmad Ilubo, is elected for the job. Okay. Okay. I admire your confidence, and I hope that it will translate to victory. If God wills it. It is by the gift of God. So, good luck in your endeavors. We are also watching for it. Good luck in your endeavors. We are praying for the best man to win, whoever that will be. And when he wins, we hope that the entire Nigeria will be better for it. Thank you so much. We'll be better for it by the gift of God. Honorable Ahmed Raview, thank you so much for being a part of our program today. Thank you so much for having me, and God bless. Bye, next week. Sorry, just a moment. By next week, we might be calling you to tell us more about the Daurah Drive Port, how that works, and everything around it. So, be on standby. Thank you so much. But, it's a quick one in a minute. In a minute, I would just say the Alaylal Drive Port is an international port of origin and isolation from which cargo could be exported to anywhere in the world. And that will also be an ultimate, and that is also an ultimate distinction for cargo from anywhere in the world, any continent, right into Hanoi, the Waikiki Kumbadu, a lot of them. Okay. So, it's a place that everybody will want to know about, and they will really tell us about the economy and improve our foreign exchange earnings. We will have time for details of that by next week. So, get yourself prepared. All the information we need to know, we will get them by next week. Thank you so much for today. Thanks. Thank you so much. God bless. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Thank you. So, that was Honorable Ahmed Rabiu, the managing director of Daora Dryport. How that works, what importance it is to the economy and everything we need to know. We'll find out next week when we bring him on the program again. Right now, we'll take a short break when we return. We'll be talking about no-paying threatening to go on strike. Stay with us. With a population of over 200 million, Nigeria is the most popular black country on earth. We are diverse, strong, vibrant and mostly young. We are yet to reach the land of our dreams. We can write, tell and be our own story. From the economy, education, security to politics, you name it. We can build the Nigeria of our dreams if we work together. 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