The Role of Education in Implementing Social Justice The Case of Shia Muslims

Abstract

In honor of World Day of Social Justice, on February 24, 2014, Shia Rights
Watch and American University held the first-ever conference devoted to presenting
new paradigms for exploring how the rights of the minority Shia Muslim
community can be protected against such entrenched realities as
subordination, injustice, violence, discrimination, and marginalization. Social
scientists define minority as a culturally, ethnically, religiously, or racially distinct
group that coexists with, but is subordinate to, a more dominant group.
This subordinancy, the chief defining characteristic of any minority, has nothing
to do with numbers, a fact perhaps most vividly illustrated by South Africa
under apartheid (c. 1950-91).
The conference, held at American University, was cosponsored by the
Mohammed Said Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace. Well-known and high caliber
policymakers, professors, and researchers shared their findings in order to
offer solutions designed to foster peace, tolerance, and religious freedom for
this group and the regions in which they reside.
In his capacity as the first occupant of the endowed Mohammed Said
Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace as well as the founder of the university-wide
Center for Global Peace, Abdul Aziz Said (School of International Service,
American University) welcomed everyone. He remarked that peace is far
more than the absence of war, that it is, in fact, inclusive of social justice, ecological
sustainability, sustainable economics, and cultural diversity (peace as
the absence of structural violence). Thus, conflict resolution is one of the building
blocks of peace. Given that the ends we seek and the means that we employ
in the study of peace and conflict resolution are interconnected, teaching
these two fields must be based on a pedagogy that is itself peace and not
merely a process of certification. He argued that education about peace and
conflict resolution and education for peace and conflict resolution are two
sides of the same coin. Peace and conflict resolution education combine information
with liberation and procedure with transformation. He concluded ...