“It’s such a neat thing for all the community just to break down walls and come together celebrating Christmas and thinking of Christ.” This time of year, the ornaments are hung and presents are shared. “All right, guys, here are your hats.” But in the midst of the holiday busy-ness,

A community in Utah is gathering to commemorate the reason for the season. In an audience-packed auditorium, parishioners from several denominations are sharing the Christmas story, in their own language and culture. “Christmas is so important because it’s the one time of year where we can all focus on Jesus Christ,

What He did, and what He’s done to teach us how to be good to one another.” “I loved it! We went to last year, so this is our second year coming. And it’s so fun to get everybody together and just see all the different types of singing and dancing and stuff like that.

Just a fun way to celebrate Christmas.” The Community Christmas Celebration is an interfaith event organized by My Hometown. It’s a community improvement group led by several denominations and sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “It builds communities because faith is the heart of the community.”

“When we first started three or four years ago, it was hard to get a few people to come. But now, on a good day, we’ll have 500 or 600 volunteers, 100 neighbors coming out and helping each other, knowing each other and working together. And it’s just changing the community.”

And while the holidays will soon pass, for this community the spirit of Christmas carries on through their volunteer efforts. “You just have people that believe in God, that believe in Christ, and that are willing to act to lift and help other people in His name. And that’s what we saw tonight.”

#Interfaith #Community #Christmas #Celebration #Utah #Draws #Hundreds

>> PAUL: Hi everyone, my name is Paul Raushenbush. I am the senior advisor for public affairs and innovation at Interfaith Youth Core. I am thrilled about this conversation. Thank you for joining us, I am honored to be with this group of interfaith pioneers, I have

Been working in this field for a long time. I view these four panelists as pioneers in interfaith work who have made space in the workplace for people to come as they are, in the fullness of themselves as religious people, as spiritual people, no matter what

The world view. They add to the richness of the grand mix of what makes the company or an organization an excellent place to work, and a good place to spend a lot of our time which is what we do at work. We spend a lot of our lives there. These people have helped

Make individuals feel less alone, they have helped communities enjoy the diversity, the richness that exists within that space. Over the next hour, we are going to talk about interfaith, ERG which is employee resource groups or business resource groups as our

Twitter friend will explain to us. Then also, we will have a chance to hear from your questions, we want to know what goes into these things, we want to know what some of the needs are that they have met. What is the future of this kind of work in organizations and corporations?

This is a discussion between all of us and we hope we will all go away enriched and excited about the possibility of interfaith groups and interfaith cooperation located in companies. I want to start by extending my deep thanks to Farah Siddiqui, who is at Salesforce who

Founded FaithForce at Salesforce. Who really helped to organize this panel, she has this network, this wonderful network. Again, thank you very much, Farah. I’m going to do very brief introductions for each of the panelists because what you don’t want to hear is me

Droning on about it. We are going to put their longer bios in the chat, and I urge you to look at each of their bio and find these people because they are doing incredible work. Starting with Farah Siddiqui the manager of trailhead programs and processes at Salesforce and the

Cofounder and global president of FaithForce, Salesforce’s interfaith employee resource group. Dan Eckstein is a director within Accenture media and technology practice, he is the leader of extensions Jewish employee resource globally as well as the lead of interfaith employee resource group in the Northeast. Mike Klose is the cofounder and cochair of Twitter’s

Newest BRG, business resource group Twitter Faith, where he gets to champion faith inclusion at Twitter for his fellow tweeps, which is a new term for me and we will be hearing a little bit about that, around the globe and I encourage you to follow Mike on Twitter

Of course. Becky Pomerleau serves as the director of finance risk management at PayPal where she also co-leads PayPal interfaith diversity and inclusion community. Again, a huge thank you to all of our panelists and I’m going to start with you Farah Siddiqui to talk about

The genesis of FaithForce and a little bit about what are the needs that are unmet and how did you manage to start this interfaith ERG at Salesforce. >> FARAH: Thank you Paul, for a great intro. I’m excited to be here and share a little

Bit about our story at Salesforce and how we brought faith inclusion. Before I go into that, I want to give a little bit of insight into who I am which will kind of feed into why FaithForce came about. I am Muslim, born and raised in Miami, Florida. I grew up with

This identity, it has been part of me my whole life. I would say my interfaith journey has been lifelong. Because in grade school, I was an “only,” in middle school I was in “only,” in the mall I would be the only one looking like myself. In all the spaces

You want to find ways to fit in, ways to belong. I think I did that; I did that through an amazing community that I was supported by with just the Muslim community, the Pakistani community that I was part of. Also, through friendships that I made in school with people

Who are different. My best friend in elementary school was a Jehovah’s Witness. My best friend in high school was a Seventh-day Adventist. Through these relationships, it wasn’t like I was the only odd one out, they were too. We could do it together. We could be different

Together and respect each other. It was just a beautiful kind of upbringing. Being different, it was just normal to me. At the same time, I don’t think anybody likes it. To be the odd one out. Having to put on tights underneath my shorts in gym and everybody look at me

Weird like, why is she doing that? Or not eating the hotdogs during the lunch day, everyone is excited about because I couldn’t, they weren’t halal or kosher. All those things kind of weigh on you, always being a little bi6 left out and feeling that lack of belonging

That you see everybody else around you experiencing. Move on to college, finally, and a lot of the attendees here might be in college right now, or in that university setting. I was actually the president of the Muslim Student Association at my university. Why did I find

That community? Because I wanted to find like-minded people when you are surrounded by people who aren’t like you, to have that community and that support just builds your confidence in your identity. It was such a valuable time for me to find that space of belonging in

The college setting. This was all pre-9/11, then 9/11 happens. Just for my community it was just a very difficult, for the world it was a very difficult time but for the Muslim community in America to be viewed as suspicious and all the stuff, the baggage that went around

With that. There was such a need to go beyond yourself and show people that what you’re seeing in the news, what you’re seeing in the movies, that is not my community. There is so much more to Muslims and my experience is not any of that. How do I go across my

Identity and talk to people and help them see the beauty of my tradition? That is kind of led me to constantly talking and learning, joining events and listening to stories that helped me connect with people who are different. I found so much value in learning about different

Identities. Like the Black expense, LGBTQ experience and seeing my struggle in that story. Like, I relate, whatever you went through, it’s a very different lens of what I went through but at the heart, those feelings were so similar. I heard all these other stories

And I was like where is my story? Where is that faith experience? It just wasn’t as loud, and I just wanted to know if there could be space for it. Then come into work, I’ve been in corporate America for around 12 years and throughout my entire career I’ve been the

Only one who has looked like me and believed like me in the spaces that I was in. An office of 30 people or an office of 200 people, I was the only hijabi woman. Everyone’s nice, everyone’s caring, but do I really belong? There’re walls that I’m creating, there

Are walls that exist because of perceptions I know people have about my faith and they just don’t know how to talk to me about it. Can we talk about it? Can we break down those walls? At Salesforce there is already a culture of belonging, of allyship, but there just

Wasn’t that faith narrative. I just reached out to the office of equality, and asked a question to the program owner there saying, “can we add an element of faith inclusion, can we try an interfaith group?” He was down for it and he said let’s do some research

And see what we can come up with. So, we talked to a few different companies to see how they were set up and how they approached it. We didn’t really see an interfaith model; we saw a lot of faith-based models. I just knew I didn’t want to go that route, I wanted to

Find a space for myself to be able to be supported in who I am but I wanted to go beyond myself too, because there is so much value in going outside of yourself and learning about the other. How can we combine that – be your authentic self, confidence in who you are,

But also build those relationships across divides, in my case religious divides, but everything else too. FaithForce came about, we put a charter together and pitched it to our executives and they said let’s do it! No pushback, maybe a little bit, make sure

We know—how are we going to address if this happens, or that happens, there’s always concerns when you talk about religion at work? Our charter was very clear how we were going to address it. We have an HR structure at a company just like any others, so any issues we can

Just direct in the right channels. When it comes to inclusion and belonging, recognizing that faith is just a part of our identity. When we say bring your full self to work, that part is included. You couldn’t really argue against it. We got set up and launched

In five cities initially. Since then, we have grown to over 17 cities across five continents, 3000+ members of all different faith backgrounds. It has been an amazing journey; we have 50,000 employees at Salesforce, and I need to reach them all. The work is not done, but just really

Excited to be able to make a difference in my own little way. >> PAUL: Thank you so much, that was inspiring. Mike, can you tell us about your experience at Twitter? >> MIKE: For sure, first off for anybody that missed the intro, my name is Mike. I’m one

Of the cofounders and cochairs of Twitter Faith, our multifaith BRG. I use he/him pronouns, Twitter is also hiring for anybody looking for a job. Thank you so much for having me here today, I really, really appreciate this conversation. Just hearing Farah speak and

Sharing a bit of her story, I don’t know how I can follow that. Yeah, when it comes to Twitter Faith, I think I would be remiss not to give credit to a handful of other Twitter employees who, before I ever got involved, they raised their voice to our leadership

To say that faith is missing from our inclusion and diversity work, very similar to what Farah identified. Our Twitter employees which I will probably end up referring to as tweeps just by habit, they indicated to our leadership that we need to get better at this and to

Be honest, I didn’t know, I work in an office that is about 40 people. I’m probably one or two of those 40 people that identify with faith, it is not something I really talk about work or, not used to. I didn’t really know it was even possible to just raise my voice

To our leadership and indicate this. But, I am grateful for other tweeps who did, and we already have amazing work being done with existing BRG’s in our company. If our goal is truly to make Twitter the most inclusive and diverse tech company in the world, then

Faith needs to be represented as its core to the identity of billions of people around the world. Fortunately, we have such a supportive inclusion and diversity team. Making the case for Twitter faith, I don’t think was a huge challenge. Getting it off the ground has been

A very interesting experience to say the least, we launched back in January right heading into a global lockdown. As Paul mentioned, we do call our group a BRG, so a business resource group. The difference there between an ERG and a BRG. The way I see it is that

BRGs are uniquely positioned to not only impact the employee experience, but also have a voice in the policies, the products and services that our company creates and puts out in the world. For example, something that is a work in progress for us right now is, how do we

Tackle the anti-Semitism that is happening admittedly on our platform and how do we get better at getting it off our platform? That is up to us as a BRG, we are able to make the recommendations and have a seat at the table in those conversations. When it comes

To the goal and mission of our BRG, we are multifaith. We were established in order to acknowledge, celebrate and foster understanding of global faith, belief, diversity, both within our company and on our service. That again, that all ladders up to this idea of bringing

Your whole authentic self to work, not feeling like you need to check your faith at the door when you come in, not feeling like you need to head to the parking lot to pray. Not shying away from talking about your beliefs or telling people that you went to church on the weekend,

Or that you prayed about this idea that you had at work. We really want to provide cover for our tweeps and give tweeps permission to practice their faith, both at work and also, through their work. I would just say, the biggest learning that we have had in the

Past eight or so months, in starting this BRG if I can share for anyone who is looking to start one at their company or organization, we spent the bulk of the first bit just really brainstorming ideas, trying to crystallize our principles on what the BRG actually stands

For and shout out to Farah, we might have taken a peek at your charter to get some ideas as well. That was super helpful in helping us clarify, what do we stand for? A lot of trial and error, my biggest learning if you take anything away from what I’m saying, is

To form a team around you, I am nothing without my fellow chairs, without my fellow office ambassadors, we also have a committee internally within Twitter Faith, knowing I am definitely not a subject matter expert in every single faith or belief out there. We have a committee

Of probably about 10 right now tweeps that cover a whole bunch of different faiths that will consult us and answer questions that we have about different observances, holidays or just things about different faiths that I myself wouldn’t know about. That has been

Invaluable to getting things off the ground and establishing processes and really advocating for all of our Tweeps around the world. I will leave it at that, and I don’t want to take up all the time and want to hear from the other folks as well.

>> PAUL: I think it might be helpful actually if you all can find your mission statements or like your principles of operation and it would be great to supply those to the folks listening so that they can walk away with those resources, or we can send out an email

Tomorrow. Becky, do you want to go next? >> BECKY: Absolutely, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here, and to be sharing because a part of our mission for our interfaith group which we call Believe is to not just

Impact within the four walls of PayPal, but also to impact the communities where we do business and beyond. Again, I really appreciate this opportunity. I pick up on a couple of things that Mike and Farah have shared so far. I would also say for those who are interested

In starting, or just in the process of getting started, that benchmarking is so important because it really helps break down some of the concerns that folks may be having. You may have this concern, but look, Salesforce is already doing this, or Twitter is already

Doing this etc. So we, being a tech company in Silicon Valley, we’ve specifically benchmarked with Salesforce, Google, Apple, Facebook, companies that we couldn’t have people within PayPal saying, “Oh, maybe an airline is able to do that, but that is totally a different

Company culture.” We wanted people benchmarked in similar industries as us. Again, it was an appropriate benchmarking and likewise, we had looked at Farah’s charter and kind of the slide that has that here is what we will do, here’s what we’ll not do. We

Have something similar that has been a very effective communication tool because you can put it in the mission statement out there. And then people always. the very next question is, “OK, but what does that really mean in practice?” We likewise have a slide that

We always share accompanying our mission statement that says here is what we are about and here’s what we are not about. We are not about promoting a political agenda, we are not about promoting one faith over another, we are also not about trying to say, well, all faiths are basically

The same. Those are some things that as we also took around a year to get to the point of lunching, have been really key in our journey. I will take a step back and go to some of my personal reasons as well for helping to cofound Believe at PayPal. Six years ago,

I suffered a series of heart attacks. Which, I was someone who had always been an athlete my entire life, I had no pre-existing conditions, no family history of heart disease, so it came as a complete shock. In fact, the damage from the heart attacks were so severe that

Within a day of experiencing my second heart attack, I was in need of a heart transplant, which I was blessed to receive just two weeks later, which is a pretty quick turnaround by most standards, sometimes folks are on the waiting list for months or even sometimes,

Depending on the severity of their condition, a year. On a side note, if you’re not signed up to be an organ donor, please do. But what really helped me through that life alternating, painful experience of waking up in a different hospital like five days later, from skiing

And active one day, to waking up in another hospital learning I needed a heart transplant. My hope and my stability during that time were really my faith. When I was able, seven months later, to come back to work, I was thinking, that sense, that source of hope,

That source of resiliency, that’s something that I want to be able to bring more fully into my everyday life and into my work. I was very fortunate to have some connections with people in leadership positions at PayPal, who had come from other companies like AMEX

Who did have faith-based employee resource groups and had had them for like 20+ years. Our senior vice president general counsel at the time, former, but at the time, Wanji Walcott was the one who really helped from an executive level champion this. So, you

Can imagine when you have, like, your head of legal saying we should do this, that breaks down a lot of potential barriers that I’ve heard folks have run up against in other companies. And so, for me, it was really about, truly, I know it sounds a little bit cliché, but

Being able to bring that full, your whole self to work. As we were trying to convince our HR folks and our diversity and inclusion programs that there was momentum around this, what really kind of tipped the scales for us is, we had a conscious inclusion training

That everyone at PayPal was going through. One of the things they did in the training was asked people to just throw out some phrases that describe their core identity. They were finding that a lot of people actually were saying phrases or words that made reference

To their faith background. It wasn’t necessarily so much about something that you could visually observe about them, which was where our existing, what at the time we called diversity and inclusion communities, but it was something much deeper than that. Their core identities were much

Deeper than that. Our next decision point also was around, well, should we have an interfaith employee resource group? Or should we have the separate ERGs by faith background? It was really important to our D and I team to make sure that we were being inclusive and

In addition to that, as we were benchmarking with some of the other tech companies that I mentioned, who do have a variety of models. We really looked at what Salesforce was doing and said, gosh, that seems like when we think about making sure we are being inclusive and

That we are actually , when we set out are mission statement to say we want to increase understanding and awareness, we are not going to achieve that mission if we are still in our separate groups. We really want to be functioning together as an interfaith group.

That’s why we chose to go interfaith, we launched in December of last year, it was kind of a soft launch at our corporate headquarters and we did our formal global launch in June of this year. Also, in the virtual world which has had its pros and cons, certainly our programming

Because it is all done virtual is now available to folks around the world. On the other hand, we do lose a little bit of some of that in person connectivity and local office connectivity, but definitely I’m very grateful that I’ve had this opportunity to start our interfaith

Group and get it off the ground. We are at a point now where we’ve been able to get programing in place to have, which we will talk more about in a little bit, you know, things for folks to start engaging in. Our next step and our kind of next challenge is

Really, how do we, now that we are getting, increasing our membership, how do we make sure that we are putting in place the right leadership positions because we have representation from all of the major world religions. We also want to make sure we are bringing in

Representation from humanists, spiritualists that maybe don’t fall into that. Also, just the run the business type of stuff of having a communications chair, a growth chair and those types of things, that is where we are at now is making sure we get people in those

Roles so we can really grow this thing to the vision that we have. >> PAUL: Thank you, thank you. Dan, let us know what Accenture’s doing, and we’ll move on to our next question. >> DAN: Sure, and thank you again for having me. It’s an honor to be with some of my peers

Who are all on the journey of helping our employees at every company bring their whole selves to work as it relates to faith. To me, my background is similar in some respects to what Farah was saying, with the same regard, very different. For me, as an Orthodox Jewish

Person, I grew up in more of a world where my peers and friends, you know, going to private school, Jewish private school, my world was really the Jewish world. It was really only until I came into the workplace where I had that exposure to people that weren’t like

Me. The questions about do I wear a kippah, or do I not wear a kippah. These are questions of how to deal with the food situation when I’m going out for dinner, do you order XYZ or something else? So how open do I share with people about what is important to me,

Related to my faith? Those were deep questions I had to ask myself as I was going into the workplace. I had a couple of jobs and really was solidified in terms of where I was sitting

But it was really only when I came to Accenture and I remember it was probably like a year or so into it, my time here, and I heard about the, our local office, was—had some money

At the end of the fiscal year and made $1000. They heard that I was Jewish and were like, oh, we had a Jewish group, but they never really did anything, do you want the money? I said great, let’s take it, let’s figure out how we’ll be able to spend this to be

Able to engage our employees. We took our Jewish group that then was just like maybe 15 or 20 people in the New York office and we went to Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway, which was right around our office in New York. It was our first event where we were bringing

People together and people were saying, wow, this is amazing that we are able to have this happen in the workplace. And then, you know, after that, I heard about this bigger interfaith group which wasn’t necessarily doing a ton, but it was around. At Accenture, it’s been

A journey for us on, you know, an interfaith spectrum. For us, it really started probably around 10 years ago as an affinity circle, which was mostly Christian employees who are gathered around the room to learn and pray together. That is sort of how it started as

A grassroots movement. It was more of an opportunity to really get people of similar like-minded interests together to be able to figure out how do they come together in the work environment. Over the years, our faith groups have really started to spring up into different areas.

Then, that has transitioned into a more formalized structure where we have both the faith groups and we have interfaith. Interfaith is the overall umbrella, then you have different faith groups Muslim, Buddhist, Baha’i, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, atheist, nonbelievers and Sikh,

And we’re now having a stronger alignment at the interfaith level with I and D, inclusion diversity leads, in order to have that tighter integration both with the company but also, between faith and interfaith. So that’s sort of been our structure and for us, one

Of the things that stands out for me is one of our building bridges workshops and what we did was after the series of racial events that happened a couple of years ago and unfortunately still to this day is building these connected workshops to bring our employees together

To talk about these topics. We ended up doing one, specifically around faith. It was just an empowering event where we brought different clergy from all the different faith groups to come in and talk. We ended off the end of the day with a Friday night Sabbath dinner

At a restaurant on the upper West side, where we had an interfaith audience being able to understand from a Jewish faith. What do the Jewish people do on a Friday night? What are the songs they are singing? To be able to experience that both from the Jewish perspectives

And from others who are non-Jewish to be able to share those types of experiences was totally different in the workplace. To me, a lot of our time now is focused on how do we make sure we have those policies and procedures, so a lot around, you know, we’re building

A new office in One Manhattan West, making sure that we have a prayer space and being able to figure out what are the things that help our employees be able to do that. From the perspective of what are the policies that, someone who wants to let’s say, come out

Of the closet, that could be from an LGBT perspective, or a faith perspective, or a disability perspective, it doesn’t make a difference. How do we make those, make sure that employees are empowered to have those types of conversations? It’s so important.

Because if the policies are there to support the employees, then the employees are necessarily going to be able to have the strength to be able to share what is important to them. Making sure that we have the policies and that we empower people. Then, it’s really training

All of our employees, across all levels around these faith accommodations. Being able to train our recruiting teams, our business teams, and finds those opportunities, like what Mike was talking about, of how do we figure out that connection to the business? Is there

A way for us to be able to think through a financial services company that wants to think about how do they bring faith into an investment strategy? How can we as consultants help them through that journey? I think what is important, especially now, is this idea of intersectionality,

Of being able to look at things not just with our own groups but also our neighboring groups. That could be both from an LGBT or racial perspective, trying to see what are the things that bring us together? Because I think that often is the thing that will really solidify

Our relationships is seeing the commonalities that we have and realizing that we are so similar together. That is a little bit about our journey, and we are now on that growth and expansion phase, moving to different locations, expanding our training, being able to really

Be pulled in by the company for these important initiatives versus, you know, the opposite. >> PAUL: I love that, I think I heard that there was actually the new corporate office was going to incorporate a prayer space which, to me, is quite revolutionary. If these groups

Can help influence the architecture of corporate America, that is really something. That’s a good example, you gave a couple good examples of how to concretize the work that you’re doing and what it really means to the employees who are in your companies. I would love for

You each to offer a brief anecdote of a time which really comes to your mind about why the work you are doing matters to people and their lives. If you could each offer just a brief anecdote of a time over the last year or two, when you felt like the work of your

Interfaith ERG or BRG, was really making a solid difference in the life of someone who showed up to work on a certain day. Farah, why don’t you kick us off and we’ll go around. >> FARAH: Sure, I have a couple of examples, you want me to keep it brief, I will try to

Find the best one. One thing is, as a person from a minority group or minority tradition, seeing that support is huge. We see that right now with our Black employees, feeling supported, feeling like your voice is heard, your community’s pain is felt, and work is done to address

It, right? I think that matters so much to our employees. As a Muslim and, you know, you can use this example for a Jewish employee, a Christian employee, there’s so many ways to look at it but, as a Muslim, coming into work when I know there is some crazy stuff

Happening in the world related to my community, it brings you down. It hurts, you want to go into a room and cry, and you have to get out and just do your work and act like nothing is wrong and that is hard. To come into work and actually, people hear about the Christchurch

Shooting, and your manager texting you in the morning saying, “Are you OK? Everything all right? If you need to take a break, go ahead.” The fact that they feel comfortable enough to reach out and say that to me now, the past 10 years no one ever said anything

About anything. It is just such a testament to the value of just creating that group, that space, that this is okay to talk about guys. Your Jewish employee is hurting right now, it’s OK to ask them if they are OK, to give them the day off if they need it.

Just like we are doing for our Black employees who need to know that we understand, and we care, and we are here to support you. At Salesforce, after Tree of Life, after Christchurch, after the Sri Lanka shootings, after these events the impacted our faith communities, where

We knew they were hurting we rallied together as a company and had these healing circles and brought in speakers from different faith traditions. For the Tree of Life example, we brought in a rabbi to share some beauty around the Jewish traditions on just explaining

About grief, and mourning, and support, and community. It was just a beautiful time to sit with their Jewish employees and listen to them and say that we are here if you need us and, as a company, we support you. And just donating where we can donate to help

Support, right? We did the same thing for Christchurch and the Muslim communities. That being shown love, and support, and seeing the tweets from your CEO, just, I never expected something like that at work. To see that FaithForce was able to help this come about. Because,

As Mike mentioned, it doesn’t take one person, it takes a team. We have an amazing team of global leaders, regional leaders, executives who are just so supportive of this message. So, I think that has been so empowering for employees to see that support. For Sikh employees

As well, right? It doesn’t matter what your identity is, we are here to support you and that is known now at the company and I think that is pretty huge. >> PAUL: Thank you. Becky, do you want to go next?

>> BECKY: At PayPal, we have other companies as well, I think you’ve used the word allyship, right? And we have an acronym for allyship—the “A” stands for “act,” “listen, learn, and yield your privilege.” In terms of ally, right? That’s how we kind of help teach

People how to be an ally, not necessarily in that order, because you should probably listen and learn before you act. A lot of our events in our year one here are focused around the listening and learning. A shout out to Farah, she was a guest speaker at an

Event that we hosted, a learning event that we hosted around Ramadan. And really describing for attendees not only what is Ramadan and how is it celebrated, but specifically, based how it is celebrated, how can you support your Muslim colleagues in the workplace? For

Example, please do not schedule meetings at the time that they are breaking their fast because they have not eaten all day, and this is their chance to actually get to eat. Or during Ramadan, please don’t, while people are fasting during the day, let’s not schedule

A big smorgasbord type of event for everyone, except your Muslim colleague feels left out because they cannot partake in that event. So, coming out of that event, what was really I think a key win for us, is that our Muslim colleagues were saying how, Farah talked about

This already, but how it made them feel so included when there were all these people not of the Muslim faith attending the event, and actively wanting to, having that natural curiosity, and actively wanting to learn about it. When we have Muslim events, it is not,

OK, so all the Muslim people show up. We have Muslim events and the Christian, and the Jewish, and the atheist and everyone else show up in addition to the Muslims. But to really learn about it, to build those bridges even within our faith communities so that we can

Support each other in the workplace. >> PAUL: Great. Mike? >> MIKE: When I think about impacts of Twitter Faith so far, I think that one thing we discovered pretty quickly was that a really easy entry point for people into the conversation around

Faith is food. Normally, in non-COVID times, we would be gathering around a table with our friends, and our families, and communities and sharing a meal, and having conversation. But, obviously, that is not possible right now. But even still, food provides a way to

Break down barriers. Take that, alongside this idea that faith is fun. I think we get so caught up sometimes in being really serious about faith, there is a time and a place for sure, don’t get me wrong. When I think of my beliefs in the Bible, it says the joy of

The Lord is your strength. At Twitter Faith, we are trying to find ways—How do we make faith fun and accessible and create an entry point for people? Over the course of the past six months, we put on now four different virtual events where, for four different faith traditions

And occasions, Tweeps have done a cooking demonstration for some kind of a dish or baked good that relates to the occasion that they are celebrating. We started with Purim a few months back, where a Tweep made these hamantaschen cookies, which were so deliciously looking,

I didn’t taste it myself. From there, we moved on to Orthodox Easter, where another Tweep from Ireland did a baking demo of this cake she was making. Then, we moved on to Islamic new year which is not so much the most celebratory type of occasion, but it does call for a meal

With community and family, and it’s through that demonstration that we are able to start to explain traditions to people, start to share what it is that we believe and why we believe it. How we celebrate it, also during this time what makes it hard to celebrate.

I think it is really meaningful for our Tweeps to share with their colleagues like yeah, Rosh Hashanah, it really sucked that I couldn’t have a meal with my entire family, but I made this challah bread and it looks so wonderful. We’ve really been prioritizing things like

That and the impact that we’ve seen, is that this conversation around faith is going outside of the borders of just people’s faith, but into the rest of the company as well. That is what we are looking to do more of in the future.

>> DAN: For me, I would, obviously I think what Farah mentioned specifically around the leadership around when those tragedies occur I think has been super uplifting for me. I remember after the Pittsburgh shooting, seeing a text message from the head of HR, Ellyn

Shook at Accenture, when she texted me like, Dan, are you okay? Can you talk? At that point we just ended the Shabbos and I had no clue what was going on. I was wondering, am I going

To get fired. At the end of the day, being able to have that relationship with our leadership and, you know, getting on the phone with the CEO that night and her saying, “I’m going to personally write a note to the community.” I was just shocked and in awe and inspired

By that and it meant a lot. For me, my story would be aligned to something that my friend Elan Kogutt reminded me of recently. One of our first events after that Fiddle on the Roof event was something called Dating, Dining, and Devotion. We had each of our faith leads

Talk about how their faith group relates to romance, food, dietary laws, prayer, and meditation. It was a great event and a packed audience. It was exciting to see how everyone was together. A couple days later, someone came over to me, he was a colleague—he was a project manager,

And he told me a story about how he was leading this team and it was a virtual team. He had one analyst who always went MIA on a Friday afternoon, he had no idea where he was, he

Would IM him, never got a response. All of a sudden, from coming to our event, he heard about the Jumu’ah prayer, and heard about that going on Friday, and had no clue that Muslims pray then. He approached his colleague and he talked about his own faith as an Orthodox

Jewish person and observing the sabbath. It came out that, he was saying that he was also an observant Muslim, and he felt uncomfortable talking about his faith in the workplace. This manager and employee now built this greater bond together where they have this new shared

Understanding with each other. They are able to bring that into this new workplace and have this understanding, this analyst and now they are able to go and have the strength to say, hey, I can talk about this. It’s not something that I need to keep to myself

And just go MIA because you’re scared about who you are. That to me, is one of the most important examples to be talking about, is because throughout everything, if we don’t empower each of you who are listening, to talk about these topics, then we are not going

To be able to have that kind of inclusive environment, people want to see people that look like them, that sound like them and that have similar interactions like them. Whether you are the same faith belief or not from someone else, just the ability for you to

Be able to talk about it, even if you are an atheist, to be able to talk about what you believe in, has been—has opened the eyes of so many different people. So, Paul, over to you for the Q&A.

>> PAUL: All right, we do have some really great questions. I don’t – we’ll – you can each take one or two of them. It started, one of the interesting things that’s coming up in a few questions is training. Like, how are you trained to be an interfaith leader?

Some of you may have trained in higher ed to do this, others of you may not have any training. I am curious because we have someone who is talking about, Matt mentioned, on Facebook, that he is working with college students to develop a set of skills that would help lead

An interfaith, this kind of interfaith effort. He’s curious, like, if you were looking for an employee who would be able to bring this to the workplace, what would be the skill set that they would need? Were each of you trained in this? Did you learn it on the job?

Did you self-teach? Maybe one or two of you could answer this question—anybody feel inspired to take this? >> FARAH: I will take a stab at it; I’ve had zero training. I don’t think training is necessary, I think an open heart is necessary. I think kindness is necessary, right? Like,

What skill set would you bring to a leader, or people that I envision taking over when I retire. It’s just somebody who is empathetic, who’s kind, who’s caring, when they see difference, they don’t just argue with it, they learn to respect it. How do you build

That? You build it through religious literacy training, I would just read up on different traditions, get to know people who are different from you, expand your circles. That’s kind of what I would advise in terms of skill sets. I think, build a kind, soft heart, but I’m

Sure maybe others have had actual training and you can chime in. >> DAN: It’s funny because I feel like if you look at some of the other employee resources groups, like there’s like, if there is a disability group or an LGBT group or an African-American

Group, the question generally isn’t like, oh, what training have you had? It’s a question from a faith perspective of like, other faith is so sensitive that we need to make sure that you have training because you can mess this up. I think to your point Farah, I think

One of the things I always share with people is you just got to try and do something. You sometimes could get so woven into I want to make sure every I is dotted and T is crossed,

But you just got to do something and figure out, how am I going to engage employees? You have to figure out for yourself, how am I as an individual? It’s that introspection that each of us need to have is, how are we going to look at ourselves and say, “you

Know what? These are my experiences and I didn’t think of myself as a leader and I didn’t think of myself as an industry expert, but I have my own expenses and I can bring those to the table.” For me, that was sort of the eye-opening piece for me is not realizing

That it was just a Jewish person who was coming to work, but I was a Jewish person who had experiences that I can now bring light to other people as well. I think that to me was the exciting part. >> PAUL: Becky or Mike, do you feel –

>> BECKY: Likewise, I’ve had no formal training in this space and it’s more of a learning by doing. Some of the best advice that I was given along the journey of starting are two things that hopefully can be key takeaways for our audience. The first is, seek first

To understand. Similar to what Farah was mentioning in terms of an open heart. As you approach these situations where you may be getting into difficult conversations with people whether it’s about faith or otherwise, that is the type of skill set or characteristic that you

Would be looking for as an interfaith leader. Somebody who seeks first to understand and doesn’t just come in with like, “well, this is my approach or my way.” The second thing is, to be a magnet and not a detractor. If your intent is to attract people and be a

Magnet, you are going to approach how you run interfaith very differently than maybe someone who is kind of a “my way or the highway” type of situation. I will say that for myself, I realize I haven’t mentioned that I am a Christian. Everyone else has made

Some reference to that but I’m also of the Christian faith, which is a faith that says that there is one truth, there is one path to heaven. I had some initial internal struggle on this, should do interfaith or separate ERGs, because I’m like, well, am I giving

A platform for the other faiths where people could choose to convert to that faith or something. As I really prayed about that internally, the Holy Spirit led me to a verse in the Bible that talks about that God gave us the right to choose, the free will concept. So, it’s

Not my place—so this is kind of a skill set that I would suggest interfaith leaders have or, if this is something they kind of struggle with is—it’s not my place in an employee resource group to be saying I’m trying to promote a specific faith. The employee

Resource groups are exactly about supporting employees in the workplace. That is something, whether you are in the context of a collegiate world, a scholarly academic world, or otherwise, these types of groups are really about supporting people within their context and not about

Trying to be a church, serve the function of a church, or a mosque or a synagogue. >> PAUL: This is going to be the last question—there was a question about the charter and how you

Rely on it. I would love for each of you to be able to provide us with your charter so that we can send that out if possible to the group tomorrow. The last question I want to end on is, in what way does your work intersect with a broader understanding of how religion

Functions in the workplace? What managers at your company should know in order to provide maximum respect and accommodation for religious people in the workplace. Are you intersecting with managers? What advice would you, if they were to turn to you, what kind of advice would

You suggest for the company as far as a broader sort of approach to supporting religious individuals in the workplace? >> FARAH: I can chime in here really quickly. One thing Faith Force has done, like we haven’t really gone out to create our own faith inclusive training for managers or anything like that,

But what we’ve really done is try plug in with existing training, existing leadership development things, inclusive events and initiatives that are being developed, making sure there is that element of faith identity that is part of it. If we are doing an inclusive promotion,

A trail or something, learning module, one of the examples put a woman in hijab or a put a man in a kippah. Just adding that element so people open their eyes to that type of situation, scenario as a leader that we put into. As a manager, you have people of different

Faith identities, how are you going to manage effectively that type of diversity? There is existing diversity training, there’s existing leadership, fitting in that narrative is something we really push towards, to have that engagement with our leadership. >> PAUL: Who else? >> MIKE: Can I add something as well? >> PAUL: Yes please.

>> MIKE: With Twitter, I feel like there are multiple ways where we tackle this but something I found to be really meaningful with me and my manager is that I’ve actually made my BRG work and involvement a part of my yearly goals as part of my rating. It’s something that,

Because that comes up in our one-on-one all the time and in general, our company does a fantastic job as well of cultivating a culture of allyship. When you are able then, kind of, hold your managers accountable to that and say like, hey, I need you to show up for

Me, I think that goes a long way. Once it becomes visible, it becomes contagious. Then other managers will start doing it. It just will spread through the company and really change things in how you operate as well. Yeah, OKR’s ratings are included in there as possible.

>> DAN: It’s true, most people don’t realize the work that they do sometimes as a passion, right, has so much impacted to their daily life. The people that they are managing are the people you can translate into so many different things. For us, one of the things

That we were lucky enough to have is, you know, we got a sponsorship to have an interfaith summit. We brought together 150 people for half a day training across all levels, from managing director to the analyst, together to be able to bring our own training. This

Is stuff that we really developed on our own. By empowering our employees at all levels to be able to figure out what is the structure of that day and how will we be able to think through that, we were able to build a curriculum ourselves that was able to be shared with

Employees to managers to managing directors and now is being taken to each of the different regions as well. We are trying to bring that same training during some of our connect days to be able to bring our employees to talk about these topics and to continue to bring that awareness together.

>> PAUL: Well, this has been an extremely inspiring hour that has passed very quickly for me. So, I want to again, thank all of our panelists for being so forthcoming and really bringing your whole selves to this conversation, which is actually indicative

Of the way that this work operates. It’s being true, being vulnerable, being authentic to who you are and letting that be a blessing. Each to one of us—each one to the others. So, I feel very blessed by each of you and for all of you who have been with us today,

We will be reaching out soon. Again, thank you again to all of you.

#Interfaith #Groups #Work

So greetings of peace everyone. Welcome to this panel discussion. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, depending from where are you joining us today as we have speakers from literally all over the world. Uh it is my great pleasure to welcome all

Of you either who are following us on the live stream on different channels. Uh as I said, this will be the panel discussion under the title countering hate speech interfade and intergenerational perspectives. Uh this is organized as a part of the

Fellowship program. Myself, hello when my colleague Amina Furdak are beside other roles that we are having, we are also fellows. So, as a part of our final Kaisit Fellowship Program, we decide to organize this webinar on the occasion of the World Interfaith Harmony

Week and even though World Interfaith Harmony Week is happening at the first week of the February, as we all know, it is, there is plenty of activities organized throughout the month of the February and one of that is today’s panel discussion that we are

Organizing. So, I would just like to shortly introduce all co-organisers of today’s panel discussion. The first one is of course Kaisit International Dialogue Centre, SBI Dare Fellows. So the Kaisit Fellowship Programme brings together leaders and educators from different religious

Backgrounds from all over the world. For training in dialogue facilitation, intercultural communication and promoting social cohesion. Uh and this is all done by by the pool of Kaisid expert. The program equips fellow ops with the skills to educate their students and communities about

Interreligious dialogues so they can become facilitators and leaders in the dialogue and active peace advocates in their communities and we hope that this today’s panel discussion will contribute this aim as well. The second organizer is Youth for Peace which is Youth

Led Organization from Bosnia and Youth for Peace bring young people of diverse, religious, spiritual expression coming from different cultures and tradition backgrounds from all over the Boston Hertz of Govina And this organization is established to promote dialogue, interfaith and

Interactive cooperation to end all kinds of violence and to create culture of peace and justice for youth. A youth for peace is also CC of United Religion Initiative which is our third partner on this webinar. So United Religion initiative is a global

Grassroot interfaith network that cultivates peace and justice by engaging people to bridge religious and cultural differences and work together for the good of their communities and the world. Europe is one of the eight URI regions and I’m very glad to

Say that URIN presence in all in more than 111 countries currently with more than thousand groups called cooperation circles and even for peace is one of them. You can find more more information about all these organization on the links that will be provided

During the livestream. Now I would like to welcome all of our panelists of today’s discussion. We have very nice group of people coming together from all over the world as I said. So welcome again. Thank you very much for making extra

Effort to join us today despite all this time differences and a lot of activities that is happening throughout the month of February. We are really happy that you accepted our invitation And we decide to discuss about this topic of countering aids hate speech

From perspective of interfaith and also intergenerational perspective because we know unfortunately that today’s hate speech is presence all over the world and and especially now when we are using the social media and when we are all present in the online sphere so

Much. So we thought that this will be very important to discuss what can be done in terms of bringing people from different backgrounds together not just in a religious sense but also a different generation. Therefore we would like to hear what our

Distinguished speaker had to say on this topic and I would like to invite Tahil ah Sharma. He is regional coordinator for North America in United Religion Initiative. So Tahil welcome. I will just shortly use him. So, Tahil is an Interfaith activist based in

Los Angeles in United States of America. He was born to Hindu father and a sick mother. Following the Oak Creek shooting of Sikh Temple in 20 12, Tahil become involved in efforts for Interfaith Literacy and Social Justice and he has

Also been doing this very professionally for the past eight or nine years. He also serves as the Los Angeles coordin term for Sathana which is coalition of progressive Hindus and he also serve in various organization in different capacity to educate,

Engage and serve various communities that promote interfaith cooperation and ethic analytical pluralism, a social and and productive norms is society including Interfaith Youth Cord, the Parliament of the World Religion, of course, his role in United Religion Initiative and much more. So I

Think the Tahil is a great person to give us input on the topic that we are discussing today about countering hate speech as a young person, as also in a person who is working quite a lot in Interfaith field. So, Tahil, we are happy

To have you with us today and please floor is yours. Thank you so much, Layla. Good morning, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s such an important time for us to be able to talk about countering hate speech Um mainly because a

Nature of how we address it has been sort of a constant question in the context of many countries in the world but particularly in the United States in a country that professes an idea of the freedom of speech. Um there has

Been a very troubled aspect in approaching this idea of what is acceptable speech and what is not acceptable speech. Um and coming from a space where I work with a lot of religious and spiritual I know that especially in the space of the

United Religions Initiative, the nature of how we engage in this work is centered around creating a space for appreciative inquiry, getting to know people as much as possible, and trying to deepen our understanding of them as making it a process of deeply

Understanding ourselves as people. Um and what happens in this work sometimes can be very challenging because the nature of dialogue in in the context of Interfaith Cooperation especially makes it especially challenging to be able to address differences in a way

That make us really feel like we can really empathize with other people. And sometimes the nature of empathy can be itself very challenging because we like to use the framework of filling in or feeling as if we are in someone else’s shoes. Um

But what happens when you can’t actually fit into those shoes What if those shoes feel uncomfortable? Uh the nature of empathy is actually to go a little more than just trying to make sure that you know the exact person’s experience. You

Don’t need to know their suffering to be able to help them. Um you don’t need to experience their exact suffering to be able to help them either. Um what you do need to understand is the nature of building those powerful bridges between

Communities and individuals. Uh requires us to be able to step into a space of solidarity to step into a space of that appreciative inquiry that allows us to go a lot deeper than we usually do when we’re stepping into spaces that are

Unknown or uncomfortable to us. Um and in the United States for the past several decades the ability of mitigating the the speech that is sort of targeted towards many minority religious and cultural and ethnic communities. Um continues to be a challenge today. Um because

Is in the nature of how we understand even our own United States Constitution that interpretations allow people to understand the nature of the freedom of speech as very different things. Um for me entering this perspective personally speaking, the nature

Of having freedom of speech is essential to the way that we interact with each other but we need to remind people that a speech has consequence, both good and bad. Uh and the nature of the intention and ways that you are expressing the speech

Are essential in how you are able to make or break communities. Um and in my work personally as someone who has been doing interfaith work for just about a decade now. While at the same time being someone that is deeply involved in the

Mission and values of the United Religions Initiative it becomes very clear that when we centre an interfaith narrative or an interfaith foundation to the nature of dialogue. Um we are able actually mitigate hate speech in ways that we haven’t

Been able to see before. Um the nature of this work of standing up for communities that are facing things like anti Semitism and Islamophobia specific examples tend to be pushed by a lot of misinformation, by a lot of conspiracy theories that are

Both historical and new. Um and it it took a lot of Interfaith communities to show up for Muslims and Jews here in the United States to make them feel like they were not alone and to be able to start deeper conversations with them and

Engaging this idea that solidarity looks like a lot more than just seeing you when you’re happy and seeing you when you’re sad. It’s being able to show up and say what do you need and how can we keep this relationship flourishing?

Um so that’s kind of the context I’m bringing in this morning. Um albeit it may not be comparable to others experiences who in the in around the world having interfaith dialogue can be something beautiful but it can also be something that can get

Boring after a while when it is the same people talking about the same things. Uh but there is a a an active role that each of us can play in making sure that we are talking about things that are transformative and being able to improve

Society. So thank you for that this morning Linda. Thank you very much Tail for this very valuable input and I think that you already start this discussion and highlighted some very important thing as you said we definitely need to discuss about empathy but

Beyond just understanding of the empathy but stepping outside of our comfort zone and providing space for dialogue with others and also it is great to hear what is URI doing all over the world especially stepping not just into shoes of

Others but also trying to others when they are attacked and standing there for them. So thank you very much for sending this very important message. Now we would like to go to another young person who is Sahil who is joining us from

The United States early morning. Now we are going in the middle of the night to the Philippines and it is my great pleasure to introduce Ren Zargaro who is coming from different roles that he’s having and a huge biography but

As Tahil is coming from United the Legion Initiate is coming from another very big organization, religion for peace, so I just want to shortly first introduce even it is very hard to introduce him shortly, as he’s quite young person but with impressive and

Huge biography, so Doctor Renz Argao is the president and chief executive officer of Argao Health International. He is a registered psychologist and psychometrician and international also certificate expert in the psychotrauma. He’s one of the handful of Filipinos who hold the status

Of diplomat of the American Academy of Expert in Traumatic Stress and his work as clinical psychologist include over a decade of experience in clinical administration, case management, psychological assessment, psychotherapy, mental health and psycho social support services. He also work

In quite a lot of conflict areas and in addition to his impressive clinical practice, Doctor Renz is also peace activist and he is engaged in a faith-based diplomacy and development work through religion for peace. He is coordinator of the International Youth Committee

Of Religion for Peace which is the world’s largest and most representative multi-religious coalition where he also serves as a member of the World Council of Religious Leaders as well as international executive committee and he also has quite impressive academic career and

As you know, he’s holding the PhD diploma and I think that I will stop over here because if I continue it will took half hour to go through all your impressive biography but once again, thank you very much for accepting to be with us today

And we are looking forward to hear your input on this important topic. So, floor is yours. Thank you very much, Leila for that introduction. I can feel that you’re overwhelmed. I I got overwhelmed with, the introduction as well. Um, good

Evening from my side of the world. Uh, from the Philippines. Good morning. Good afternoon to wherever you may be. And ah I’m happy to be joining you in ah this panel and this session that we’re having today. Um it’s very

Important and timely to talk about hate speech and what we can do to counter it especially at this time wherein hate speech is becoming a major threat to peace. Um largely due to the now more connected world that we live in. Of course

Thanks to the internet and our social media platforms. Um the social media platforms and their companies seem to continuously allow the proliferation of various expressions that advocate initiate, promote, or even justify hatred, violence, and discrimination. All over the

World. And all all of this are disguised in the context of the freedom of expression or as he’ll mention the freedom of speech. And true. We have that freedom to express ourselves. But let us not forget that freedom is not absolute. As

Victor Hugo puts it the liberty or the freedom of one citizen ends where the liberty or freedom of another citizen begins. That is your freedom ends where my freedom begins. And hate speech is not mere expression of opinions or of

Your thoughts or your ideas or an exercise of the freedom of speech. It is one that can already step on and one that is violating the fundamental human rights that each of us should be able to enjoy. Ah the European Commission Against

Racism and Intolerance already recognized that there is a dangerous link between hate speech and violence. They add that hate speech possesses grave dangers for the cohesion of a democratic society. The protection of human rights and even the rule of law. Um for

Many of us, we have witnessed this in many circumstances. For us, Asians, for example, many of my fellow Asians have been injured. Worst, some of them have been killed due to anti-Asian expressions, especially when the Covid-19 pandemic started. Um, hate

Speech directed against Asians especially due to misinformation and racism, stigma and stereotypes have caused fear, trauma, and suffering to many Asian communities in the west. Here in my own country in the Philippines, hate speech is already a weapon of choice when

It comes to political propaganda. Um, it was expressions or speeches or even jokes that are filled with stigma that was used to justify the deaths of thousands of people in what called the war on drugs. It was also hate speech that brought emotional

Trauma to those who were even given or receiving death threats. Ah some were being intimidated and some are being wished to be killed, to be sick, or even to be raped. And it is hate speech that continues to divide our people.

And that threatens the very fabric of our own society. And this is not just in the Philippines. This happens in many different parts. Um of the world. Now when we look at it, why is there so much hate speech Well, we can’t just

Blame social media, of course, and the internet. We also have to look at the role of our of our own values and our ethics. Um, for us people of faith, for example, we often look up to our religious leaders, in our religious institutions. To

Guide us, when it comes to fighting hate speech. All of our religions and faith traditions teaches love. And none of these religions, none of our faith traditions teach hate. So when we see hate speech being normalized, we get to wonder why our own values

And principles are leading to this hate speech. Where are our values and principles? Those that make humanity human. In this context that lead us to hating one another or to promote violence against one another. Why are we not reminded or even taught the

Value of respect, human dignity, or even care for the other. Why do some leaders or those who should be guiding us towards what is good? Or those who ignite the flame of hate speech? What are we doing? Or what are we not doing? For the

Youth speech is something that seems so common nowadays and not that I’m saying that it is common for the youth to use hate speech. What I mean is that the youth can read, hear, or encounter hate speech in almost everyday of their lives.

It is on social media. In the mainstream media, in the streets, or in places where we gather. Sadly, I even once heard while I’m in in church. Uh, the thing is, we, the youth, have the potential, and the power to combat hate

Speech. The youth of today is the largest generation of the youth. Um, that is no in the history of human civilization. Today’s generation of youth is also the more connected. Well, that’s a good side of the internet and social media.

Hence, if we use this connectivity to influence positive changes and to counter expressions of violence, hatred, and discrimination, we can affect a shift from hate speech to speech that respects human dignity and human rights. The youth is also more

Motivated and driven by their passion to make this world a better place. We can use this to start conversations that highlight collaboration, common actions, and harmony. We can talk about what peace means and what we can do to achieve it.

We can and discuss our values and ethical principles that can help fill in the gaps that allow hate speech to start and to even grow. More than that, we can start by taking actions like calling out our friends and educating them about the

Impact of hate speech. We can also do so by signing up for others and by being the voice for those who are silenced. I too have seen how young people have fought hate speech. We have a friend in Myanmar that

Started a campaign on what they call as love speech on social media. They respond basically to hate speech with love and care and respect. A friend in India organized learning sessions to talk about the impact of hate speech and the

Danger it brings using sports, using activities that are allowing young children to learn better about values and and ethics. It is possible to bring change. We just have to take that first step towards it. Let us teach empathy. That he’ll mention empathy a while

Ago. As well as understanding. Let’s promote and celebrate diversity and inclusivity. Let us turn back to our faith and values. We also need, of course, to be mindful of our own thoughts which then becomes deeds and words. We all need to

Find the root causes of hate speech and counter or best to address these. Let us advocate for the important balance between ending hate speech while still promoting and of course, protecting the freedom of speech, expression, and belief. We need to hold

Platforms like social media platforms, accountable for hate speech. Report those social media accounts that promote hate speech or those that incite violence. Demand, demand actions from social media platforms and hold their companies accountable. Of course, let us not forget it.

Ah, we need to give support as well for those individuals who are victims and targets of hate speech. We can all do this together only if we work together. This emerging tradition of hate in speech, in actions, has gone a long, long

Time. So let us all choose to be the generation that breaks the habit on behalf of the world and of generations to come. So again, thank you for having me. I hope I was able to share some of insights from

This side of the world and from our generation to all of you. Thank you very much and may peace be upon you all. Thank you very much. I hope that you are okay for me calling you Renzo. We are almost a similar

Age. So Doctor Ergo seems a little bit too special. Great. Uh thank you very much for bringing this insight and for sending this important message and I’m sure that all our listeners on our live stream got really inspired by all

These words that you share and you highlighted same as Dahil very important things because we usually forget that hate speech is not just hate speech somewhere online but this is affecting people in offline and that it can lead to the hate

Crime and of terrible things that you mentioned some of them that are happening but on the other side it’s great to know that young people are are starting these great initiatives that you mentioned some of them and we definitely

Need more love and more peace and less hate and we hope that this webinar will contribute into bringing a little bit more more positive stories into this space where there is too many too much hate present everyday so thank you once again and I’m

Looking forward to our question and answer discussion because I’m sure that there will be some question in the line with all these great initiative that you mentioned and now we are moving to if I may say a little bit older generation because as

We said this is intergenerational approach. So more wisdom that we are looking forward to hear from our dear Sally. Sally welcome and thank you again really much for accepting our invitation to join us today as you are really inspirational for a lot of us

In URI but I’m sure beyond URI as well. So I will just try to shortly introduce you even it will be very hard to short introduce. So Sally Mahe is senior consultant and she’s a founding staff person at United Religion Initiative so this

Great organization that I present at the beginning. She held her has held senior staff position for over 20 years. And Sally formerly served as URI, director of organization development and director of global programs as well in United Religion Initiative Sheberg primarily with regional

Staff across the world. and a senior consultant right now, Sally is on call for consultation and makes career high values, practices, and in-depth organizational wisdom available to DRI community globally. Uh Celia also co-authored the birth of the global community in 2003 and

Another book is the great greater democracy day today, day by day. Sally also hold master’s degree from Harvard and she lives currently in the Bay Area with her family. Uh she maintains the every voices which I highly recommend all of

You to take a look at the URI website as there is plenty of inspiring stories from URI community all over the world and there she writes about the variety ways URI cooperation circles or member groups all over the world give voices to

The URI and also contribute to it to its success so thank you Sally for as I said founding URI and being inspirational person as you are and really looking forward to hear your on today’s topic so floor is yours. Oh. Well, thank you so

Much, Layla. I so much appreciate your enthusiasm and it’s like receiving a flow of just earnest desire to do good and to be together at this moment and again, I appreciate the fact that we get to have this conversation. It’s so

Important even though we think we know about it to be engaged with ideas, with perspectives that really matter. And really matters. I want to begin with the sentence to ignore injustice, hurts. I heard that a few days ago and it stopped

Me in my tracks to ignore injustice, hurts, And they made me feel really for in a new way the emotional connection between hate speech and our intrinsic need as human beings for justice. So we all maybe have experienced this topic from many perspectives. But

It’s important I think and I’m happy we get to talk about it here. We get to raise up these feelings and these issues here. Cuz hate speech in all its forms isn’t justice. Hateful words or prejudice, making assumptions, ignoring, propaganda. They’re not just

Bad behavior. But they violate justice. And they hurt us as individuals and our societies. So to allow micro or macro expressions of hate speech to proliferate. Without confronting them. It rips in our souls. And it it degrades a nation. It’s not just bad

Behavior I think, but it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous habits. It’s dangerous patterns that deeply hurt people and society. So, we are called to confront our own interactions with hate speech. It requires introspection and personal choice. So, what do we do? When

We maybe are confronted that we’re helping to perpetrate it. What do we do when we witness it? What do we do? When we’re victim So some choices are we can just let an incident go by kind of minimize its impact Uh we can

Remain fixed in a perspective and just unaware of of assumptions we might hold. We can choose to let our own victimized feelings fester and get buried inside of us. We can choose to continue to spread the stories of the bad ways

We’ve been treated by retelling these stories of mistreatment over and over. Now, a personal experience with that. My daughter converted to Islam many years ago and I have a Muslim, in-law family, and three grand kids and we were out on the sidewalks. Oh,

Again, maybe three, three, or four years ago and yeah, here are my, me and my daughter and little grandsons and People hurled some hate language towards us. As Muslims because she was wearing a hijab. So I had a choice then. And I I

Often fell down. I would I just kept telling. Oh do you know what happened to my daughter? Do you know what happened to us? Do you know what happened? I kept repeating and repeating. A very ugly incident. Yes it was emotional. But that made me

Realize that I forgot to say multitude kind, generous, protective, solidarity acts that they also experienced. So again, the choice of what we choose to amplify, what we choose to carry on is really ours to make. So, another choice, choices that I think

Tahil and Rent have spoken to. Is it we can be open to learn. There’s a lot of learning that’s that’s available to us now. We can be trying to recognize our own undiscovered prejudice within ourselves We can become, learn more about

Becoming empathetic. I like to call it listening ears but we’re really listening hearts. For people who we know are feeling afraid or feeling victimized by hate speech. We can practice and it usually takes practice to speak up against hate speech, especially

When it’s directed at us. to take courage, to intervene when we witness this. So I think each of these choices involve usually new behaviors. For us and for organizations. So whether we’re unaware of perpetrators or angry or hurt victims, letting these kinds of

Experiences go by unattended. Believe it eats away at our insides. And it infects our environment. So again to ignore injustice hurts. As people have said here, the bad news is that hate speech in myriad forms is on the rise. It’s fueled as you

All have said, social media, migration, insecurity from climate change, economic insecurity and injustice and unrelenting change. But the good news is that this is kind of entrenched behavior of hate speech which has been with us for a long time. It’s coming

Out of the shadows. It’s demanding our attention. I did just a brief Google search before this to prepare for this call. And it turned up many different kinds of training programs and how to understand it, combat it much of what was spoken here. I’ve

Learned a new term which you may know called counter speech. So, there’s trainings now in counter speech which is ways to present alternative narratives rather than censorship of offending speech. Counter speech is a direct response to hateful or harmful speech which seeks to

Undermine it. So there are, as you know, there’s lots of good training programs, so I encourage all the people listening, to go online, and to look for them. So, I was asked to speak from an intergenerational perspective Um, and I think Layla and Amina

Invited me in part because I was involved in an intergenerational project, hosted by URI, a few years ago. So our of this project was to launch, you might say, a counter movement We wanted to create new ways for elders and youth

To interact We wanted to just practice behaviors that would replace traditional attitudes and assumptions. With meaningful listening, a new ways of cooperating and standing with each other. So, our purpose statement, I think is still relevant. It says, our purpose is to establish

And intentional international community of millennials and elders of different backgrounds to explore dialogue, relationship building, and cooperation between these generations. Our aim is to be a learning laboratory where we learn from each other. By honestly addressing the issues our different generations face.

Now this project didn’t take off. Um but I its main intent is valid here at this time. So, again, it goes to something really at the core in us. Whether forms of bigotry happen among elders or youth, different people of diverse religions, classes,

Races. I believe what doesn’t change is people’s basic need for people for we each need to be seen. We each need to be heard. We each need to be understood. So People, I don’t think need to be agreed with as much as we

Need to be visible. To be given dignity for who we are. And I think most of us have experienced what it feels like to be misunderstood, rendered invisible, or without value. Uh, most of us hold onto these bitter feelings. And when we’ve

Had our own words ignored, or have been made invisible by another person, or a cultural mindset. The and the diminishment lurks inside of us. It was that long ago, I think two years ago now, maybe last year, I participated in a URI

Panel yet led by young adults regarding the role of youth leaders in the Interfaith Movement. And I remembered, I took notes, and I heard these speakers express anger at being stereotyped, or assumed to be people who are good at computers, yet the young people

To help us with the internet. And I feel as well. I heard the pain inside of the young people who say, well, we’re we’ve been used as tokens by our organizations. They want young people to show up for them but

They don’t really give us responsibility and authority. And I heard frustration about misguided compliments. Oh, the youth, the young people. We are relying on them at this time. We we need them so much. But they still are denied actual roles and responsibilities and

Important decision making. So, these are hard feelings to take but again, in this situation, the good news is that the results of lifting up those different feelings and experience actually was incentive to produce a book and it’s called the toolkit for

Meaningful youth participation. When I’m finished, I’ll put it in the chat box. It just came to me yesterday, hot off the presses and it’s quite practical in bringing up the very issues that I spoke of and offering perspective, offering alternatives. Well,

What can we do when we feel this way? Um so, that’s a very good homemade kind of resource that did come out of a group of young adults who are all part of the URA network. And it’s yeah a lot of practical situations. So

Wherever we encounter it, hate speech, I think and it’s dramatic and it’s subtle expressions. It won’t. It’s not going to go away anytime soon. So, I encourage that each of us make it a priority for ourselves and within our organization To acknowledge it

Is here with us and to humbly but actively learn better ways to listen and to treat one another. I wanted to close with two practical points. What we’re involved in is personal. It’s not out there. It really connects with most of our own

Experiences. And what we elders learned in school and in university. We learned over 40 and 50 years ago. The world has changed. We do have wisdom from life experience. But we don’t understand well the world as it is now. So elders need the

Knowledge and leadership of youth to meet today’s issues. Many elders have learned resilience, have learned perspective that’s can be removed and a bit distanced which is helpful And wisdom. But youth and elders need to listen to each other. And give

Elders a chance to offer offer assurance often encouragement and offer courage. So confronting hate speech is also political. I think both Tahil and Rentz mentioned it. As autocracies gain power across the world and use hate speech, propaganda to secure power. All

People are called to stand up for core democratic values. That demand respectful listening. And the inclusion of all voices. We’re called to create all of us are called to create safe spaces. For diverse to come together And raise their voices and be listened to

And make decisions that affect their lives. So it’s it’s the impact lunch deep. Combating hate speech is about standing for justice. And it’s about upholding values. At the heart of democracy. Every day we make choices about how we interact with other people. Important

Choices that can be overlooked as being trivial. But these choices define us. There are statements of who we choose to be in this lifetime And what impact we will have. On the ones close to us and our nations and the whole world. So

Thank you so much for this opportunity to offer some thoughts about this really crucial topic. Well thank you very much. I I listen to you in different occasions but always somehow you managed to impress me by all the level of the wisdom and

The words that you are sharing with us so I’m I’m really glad that you accepted invitation to join us and thank you very much for sharing all these important things that I hope will inspire all our audience to take the

Action as you said and yes you highlighted some very important things we all need fight especially in justice and this is something that is hurting all of us and I’m glad that managed to bring together a Legion for Peace and United

Legion initiative which is their core values are having desire to create peace, to create peace in the world, where there will be more justice and peace and healing for the whole human beings. So I’m really happy that they managed to bring these younger

People and wisdom from the older generation that we speak today and also thank you very much Sally for all these practical things that you share with us because I think that we all need to take action idea of this webinar and panel

Discussion is not just to share our ideas and thoughts but to motivate our audience and ourselves as well to do something after this webinar. At least maybe to letting some of our stereotypes and prejudice that we may have and

Next time when we set in our computer or meet somebody else on the street maybe to think twice how we will approach this human beings and what we will share with them. So thank you once again and you also mentioned something very

Important. This practical toolkit that we will share a link to it and I’m really happy that URI produce something like that that we will be able to share it with others but you also mentioned in a few times that hate speech should have

Alternative and counter narratives that hate that we should fight with hate speech not just by ignoring it but we need to bring some extra values and I’m so happy that my colleague Amina is is with me here today and even though we

Will now move to the Q&A section before that I would like floors to her because we were also part of the project called Alter Hate. Which was the project bringed by you know organised by young people from Religious for Peace Europe. And

Idea was to provide alternative alternatives to the hate speech. So I mean I think that this is the right place right now to share a few information about that. Before we move to next session of our webinar. So thank you Sally once again and

Amina Flores yours. Thank you Layla. Thank you very much. Um I will try to share a few words about the outer heat which is what the campaign that we had the opportunity to do in the Western Balkan specifically Um we were concentrating on

Serbia, Albania, and Bosnia, Herzegovina. But also it’s really important to say it’s a a part of the larger platform called speech for change which is a platform within religious for peace. And more precisely we were doing it inside the framework of European

Interfaith Youth Network of Religions for Peace. But one of the one of the very, let’s say, immediate results that we had and that we actually did last year on the occasion on the World Interfaith Harmony Week. We’re actually two important

Things. It was again one webinar. We already talked about the interface perspectives and interfaith importance of countering hate speech to let’s say bringing a better Interfaith Corporation. But very important and very dear to me. Output is that we try to root our alternate

Response in the interfaith. And we decided to create a post where we decided to you know just dig into different religious traditions. And we found 11 different religious traditions and again I want to say that there are many more spiritual directions,

Traditions that were not a part of our poster because again we were working also with limited resources, limited time, limited number of people who could work on this poster and it took us a lot of time to actually come up with this

Poster and to find quotes and verses inside religious traditions, inter religious scriptures and inside just oral traditions of the of different religious traditions and create this poster where we that we actually symbolically called no hate speech rule poster. And we

Found in those 11 different traditions we found quotes that are supporting good speech, that are supporting supporting positive speech. Speech that is actually encouraging people to listen to each other not to use harsh words as be and and also sometimes those were there were

Some quotes that are basically somehow prohibiting people to use harsh words to hate each other and to use words that are going to do harm to those to whom we are speaking. So I will just briefly share with you

This poster. Uh some of you had the opportunity to to see it already. The post is already available on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and it’s completely free for use because we had some inquiries from people. Is it okay that they

Use it? That they promote that they you know put it in their classrooms even. So for me this is like really important output and really important, it’s here, it’s really important to hear from people, their reactions, and their wish

Actually to use this as a learning material. So I’m just sharing this very briefly with you. Um, and probably you, you will see it, so just tell me, give me a thumbs up when you can see the poster, and as you

Can see, we decided to, dig in, let’s go in into Sikhism, Buddhism, Judaism, the high fate, Jainism, Hinduism, Confertianism, Islam, Zorastrianism, Tao and Christianity. And of course, as I said there are many other spiritual thoughts, many other traditions that we did not

Manage to include, but we invited people to send us also the, the quote. So, maybe we will have another version of the poster, maybe we will have no hit pitch rule number two, or maybe we’ll have something like more comprehensive, and

Added with other religious traditions, but, I just wanted to to share this as one of the ways how we as young people wanted to react to hate speech. How we as young people wanted to root ourselves in the interfaith and you know show

That that religion you know is a source of of positivity, is a source for peace, not just for violence because unfortunately in media we mostly see how religion is being manipulated and used for not so nice actions. So we we decided to

Show something different, something alternative. And that’s how this hate no hate speech roll poster was actually born and I do hope that you like them, you like it, and I do hope that also our viewers will be able to see the poster

And will be able to you know, get something out of it but you can definitely find it on our alter heat Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as I said. So, Layla, thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this

With you as well. Uh and thank you to you panelist for your amazing inputs. I have to say Layla that all the three speeches were so powerful. I really You know, I found myself asking like, you know, where were all these people? I mean,

We were doing campaigns, you know? Where were all those inputs? Because you know, you really touched my heart. I’m not saying this just because you know, you are our panelist, but you really spoke from your hearts, and this is important

Because you understand, and you see when people are speaking from their hearts. And it’s really touched me because, you know, you spoke about hate speech and about the real problem without like, you know, I don’t know, citing different like definitions, citing you

Know, you can do this, you can do that, you know, because you’re really speaking about practical and very important things that we need to consider where we are countering hate speech and I really hope that our viewers actually could

Sense this. Uh I was really moved by also personal experiences that you decided to share with us because those personal experiences, I think it, they have to be much more present in the media, much more present, on social media, much

More present in the public, that people actually see how people, you know, react to hate speech and what hate speech can do to people because a lot of times I spoke I spoke I spoke to to different you know especially to young people and

They, they say, you know, sometimes, you know, it’s just words, it’s hate speech, maybe it’s not going to harm anybody, you know, we were just joking, etcetera, etcetera and then like, it’s not a joke. Because at some point, this hate speech

Can lead to hate crimes unfortunately. Luckily, most of the hate speech is not that dangerous, but we never, we can never know, you know, who can be listening and who can actually take seriously what we just said. And and act upon

That. And we we saw that many times you know with the public persons who were spreading hate speech. They were just thinking okay I’m saying something because I it’s my freedom of speech. And then actually somebody takes that very very

Seriously and acts upon it. But again thank you for your inputs. Um I had a lot of questions roaming around my mind. When you were speaking that I would actually try to address to each of you one of the questions that came to my

Mind that I would like to learn more. That I will also give to lay life. She wants to say something. Uh but I would like to start with Tahil because he spoke the first and I’m just going to follow the order. And

Tahil I know that a few days ago you moderated one event that was again dealing with hate speech. It was called the power of words to say or not to say. And you had also three amazing panelists. I know that

Because I was part of the event so I had the opportunity to listen to those people but I would like to ask you just to with us few highlights from this event. Just few highlights, you know, few important messages that you

Actually found in this event. So, Tahil the floor is yours, please. Thank you so much Amina. Um thank you for the plug for our last event. It’s nice to be able to be able to share some of the highlights from that space because I think

You know we often times do not consider the role of how we use our very own languages in the nature of addressing hate speech itself. Because we always look at hate speech from the frame of this is specific language that we’re using

Against a specific community that is targeted. But sometimes what actually happens is both historically and traditional we note that there are of terms and phrases that are picked up by our own mother tongues that are actually rooted in injustice, that are rooted in

The oppression of certain communities. Um especially from the context of looking at the lens of anti-blackness, many communities around the world use words and phrases to be able to describe people of African descent or of darker skin colors as people who are

Inferior in society. Um one of the major things that actually came out of our conversations with folks from a couple of days ago was the fact that the nature of challenging this means being able to step up our ability to be able to stand in

The way of using this language. When it comes to people using this language very naturally, they don’t assume that they’re going to be challenged and we don’t think about how certain words and phrases have a certain etymology or origin

That allow them to to you know prosper in certain communities. So, it is up to us in a lot of ways to be able to step in and say, you know, I think you should consider using another term or phrase that allows a

Person or a community to feel humanized. A good example that came up was of a colleague of ours by the name of Firaz. Um who was speaking to his friend from Saudi Arabia. Um I don’t remember the term exactly but when it came to referring

People of African descent, particularly Um the term that the Saudi colleague of his used to describe them is translated to the word slave. And the person used it so naturally in conversation that Firaz got taken aback and said I’m sorry

Are am I hearing this word correctly? Are you referring to this person by this term? The person said yeah it’s just been a part of conversation so like what other term do I have? And Firaz took the initiative to be

Able to say actually you could just call person by their skip color or you could just call them by their name rather than demeaning them in the way by using such a derogatory term. And often times we don’t feel comfortable in being able to

Step in to be able to interrupt or try to cause discomfort when it comes to these kinds of things. Um but a major point that I actually brought up is how do you stand up for people? Or a community when they’re not

In the room? And what Firaz did was one of the key ways that you’re able to do that. When you know that someone is using certain derogatory terms and they sometimes use it only because they’re in the safety of one of their own

Communities. It’s up to us as allies and accomplices for justice to be able to step in and say, no, that is not the right thing to do. You should not be doing that. Um because it takes a lot of effort from,

You know, folks who are learning about communities who are showing solidarity to be able to do so when spaces do not have the representation necessary for folks to be able to intervene and say no this is not the language you should be

Using. Um it would also became very clear is that the nature of using language itself can pose a lot of different challenges. Um one of our colleagues on the panel by the name of Izzy had spoken about his journey in getting to study

Hebrews specifically. Um and when he was asked about you know what he does for a living, what he does for his studies and he had mentioned that he studies Hebrew, someone explicitly asked him, why are you studying the language of

The enemy? In other instances, one of our colleagues, Sibu, who, you know, is a polyglot in her own right, has studied numerous languages, decided to go to China and was using Mandarin Chinese with people, and was abused by people who

Thought she was of a different ethnic origin, but was still able to speak Mandarin Chinese. Mind you, she is not Chinese in origin in any way. She comes from a Costa Rican and a Polish background. But her ability and her interest in studying

Chinese brought her into a space and because she looked different and was speaking the language of the people that people were disrespecting her. So the nature of hate speech is very complicated. It is rooted in so many different forms of

Injustice. It doesn’t look the same everywhere you go. Hate speech can be directed at you. You can espouse speech that is a culturally a part of community or you can just talk and hate can be thrown towards at you for using speech. Um so

The nature of being able to combat all of those things is rooted in us being able to speak up and to stand up for what is right in the face of any of those challenges. And I think it becomes even more

Clear that in the nature of addressing that we do have to learn about the nuance of where language is used and how it’s being used. Uh because often times we don’t know the roots of why language is the way that

It is. Um much of it can be rooted to you know colonialism and the ability of those who have conquered various countries within Asia and Africa to be able to hold onto language mainly because of languages like English and

French that sort of pass on from generation to generation. And many other times through observation of what the community sort of examine and express. You’re able to also determine that there has been you know connotations that are intentionally negative towards

Specific communities that have developed over time So, this is both a historical challenge to the status quo and both the modern challenge to the status quo when we are trying to counter hate speech. Thank you very much Tahal for

This input Tanya. It is very interesting Respective when you are when we can discuss about language itself. Being the root causes of the hate speech. So thank you for bringing this dimension and I want to use this opportunity to invite all

Our people who are following us right now and watching this live stream to go to your Facebook account and account of the organization who coordinated the seminar yesterday and take a look as it was really interesting discuss and a lot of inputs that relate

To the to today’s topic as well. Uh now I want to as this presenter on the TV say like we have interruption in the program I would like now to bring us back to our speakers. So Doctor Lakshmi welcome. Uh

We hope that you manage to find the space to join us. We understand what we are organising events in different time zones than it can be really confusing. As we said at the beginning. Some of us are coming in the early morning,

Afternoon, evening, so we are glad that you managed to join us. And of we’ll be more than happy to hear your input to this topic as well. So far we have our three amazing speakers, the inputs and we start with the question and

Answer but we will now give floor to you to share to give your inputs on this topic in like five to 10 minutes and then we can continue with the question but before we give Lord to you I would like to

Shortly to introduce you as well. You also have impressive biographies like all our other panelists so I will try just shortly to give some glimpse of of your incredible and I’m sure that our followers will be able to read more about it. So

Doctor Lakshmi Viyas dedicates a lot of her time for charitable organization and her main objective is to unite the Hindus of Europe under one umbrella. Hindu forum of Europe. She coordinate recently celebrated Diwali in European Parliament that was held last

Year on the 9th of November which bring together attendance of members of European Parliament, High Commissioners, NGOs, spiritual organization, non-political communities, from UK and all over the Europe. Uh she also coordinates the UK census on their consultation and being a standing advisory

Council on religion education. Doctor Lakshmi is also well versed in Hinduism and has clear view of immigration and in an integration as the head of quality and she also works with you with people and learners from all walk of life.

She also had quite impressive academic career with writing different of books and publications so we are really happy to have you with us here today and I would like to give you floor, to give your inputs on important topic that we are

Discussing. So, Doctor Lakshmi Floor is yours. it please unmute yourself. nice, thank you very much Eliza for that wonderful introduction. Um I was wondering, I mean, are we starting the meeting or are we going to start it at at five

O’clock? Yes, so the meeting already started. We are in the middle of the meeting already one hour. So, you were a little bit late. It’s probably there were confusion by the time zones. So, our speaker already gave their input. We started

With Q&A session but we will now give floor to you and continue with the Q&A. And and that I joined late. No problem I have confusion. It was the time confusion. I am very sorry about that. No problem. We are

Happy to have you with us. So please floor is yours. Yeah, hate speech and countering hate speech is one of the biggest problem for leaders And of course, people who may run the organization, different organizations. It’s it’s a nightmare sometimes. So, it is

A hateful hate speech is a form of expression through which intent to vilify, humiliate or incite hatred against a group of people. I mean all these things everybody must have spoken. So I’m not going over it again. Ah I would like to

Say that technology has made it a lot easier for ah all all of us to share ideas and information. Seek advice and much more. And while most of this interaction is kind and respectful. There are those who use it to demean, insult, bully

And abuse. Hate speech, by and large is dangerous and may to low esteem, depression, isolation, anger, anti-social and self destructive behaviours. So, ah generally we as leaders have to provide the right direction to parents and educators seeking to prevent

Children under their care from experiencing or engaging in hate speech. As well as dealing with it in healthy ways when they encounter it. But it’s not just for a caregivers, hate speech can affect people of any age. Including adults which is why

We need to curb and allow it to happen at the same time, punish the perpetrators. Here I, I’ll give you two live examples of ah what happened in the past one or two years ah, of ah, ah, hate speech, ah, and, and, and,

And their true incidences and we, may be all of you may be familiar with it also. The first is the Oxford university incidents where ah Rashmi Samant a small town girl from Karnataka was all excited about being elected. The first

Indian women to be the president of the prestigious Oxford University Students Union. Rashmi Samant who ran her campaign on decolonization and inclusivity platform won the elections. She made the headlines in India and across the world all major Indian and diaspora

News outlets proudly covered the news. Two days later, however, it all fell apart. Samantha had to resign amid allegations of racism, anti Semitism and transphobia. A few days later, Samant quit Oxford and was on her flight back to India after being bullied,

Threatened and abused with hate speeches. For being Hindu. Leading the charge against Samantha, a staff member who still works in Oxford University and he goes scot free. When all the trauma was faced by Samant, who attributed all this to cyber

Bullying, hate speech, against Hindu student. Ah I mean this is the story and finally I think ah ah Rashmi Samant has come back and she has been reinstated ah but ah the staff who actually initiated all this, he is still

There, he is not moved out. Ah this is what happened in Oxford University. And I mean it was widely publicised by BBC and other newspapers. The second issue again ah an Hindu ah harassment by ah for a by not by Hindu. For the Hindu

Students. Ah this this is in ah New Jersey ah university Audre was the faculty member who is the main person who was ah instigating the Hindu students when traumatic. So, what happened was the the Yuva Student Union of the Regulus

University they ah they all Truscare had tweeted that Mata Sita in Valmiki’s Ramayana basically tells Bhagwan Rama that he is a misogynist pig and unkuth. I mean these are all ah worded from whatever it it came through. Nothing is cooked by

Me. She tweeted an announcement of her extremely provocative ah new course ah history of South Asia, Modi to Moguls. And also she suggested that Bhagwan Lakshmana was lusting did not allow the festival of Holi to happen in the she tried

To block the campus event on Kashmiri Hindus. Where the film maker Vivek Agnimoti was the main speaker. Ah the students were shocked and crestfallen when they found out that the animal administration did not only support Trust Gate but also childed students and other

Attacks on Tuskegee and her academic freedom. Trust K is full of hate and demean Hindus openly and was suing hate and hate speeches against Hindus. She also instigated Hindu students to join her and try to achieve her end through them. She was openly abusing

The Hindu Gods. The sad news is the university authorities did not take any action against her. The students were forced to go in in groups and came around with copied of copies of trust case social media posts. In their present to the university

Administration. They demonstrated how Truscare had repeatedly and consciously mocked Hindu deities, misrepresented the rivered ancient texts such as Ramayana and Mahabhata. Ah and tried to whitewash ah other historical atrocities in the Indian subcontinent. Finally ah after several ah rounds of

Presentation the ah the university bosses apologized. But trust K goes ahead with her agenda. She is still free. So hate speech is something which happens on all around. It’s a very very difficult scenario to tackle individually. So ah we can

Counter counter it very intelligently and very politely. So ah some of the points ah how can we counter the speech? Or the trolls. So challenge the message. Never the person who spread it. This is very important. Secondly, use facts and data to call out

Generalization and inaccuracies. I would also add here, display the harm of hate speech by showing a different perspective. Politely. And be polite in your reply. Don’t become abusive yourself. sorry The biggest source for source of hateful comments on the

Internet is trolls. A troll is a profile intentionally created to spread controversial or off topic content and provoke inflammatory responses while remaining anonymous. So, once again we need not keep quiet about it. Um if if you are not

Scared, if you are not ah ah afraid of anything, you can counter ah counter them. So what ah some things which you need to remember is we need to recognize them first. Here are some points which you can follow. Their

Name is usually non descriptive. The the one who trolls and or even just series of numbers. Remember, trolls always aim to remain anonymous. Secondly, not setting a profile picture. They generally don’t do that. So, that makes them suspicious. The same applies if

They use famous person’s image or a stock foot Next, look at their followers. How many do they have? Are they trolls themselves? And lastly, now look at their account behavior. Most of them, their activity is very irregular and repetitive. So, once you

Identify the trolls, don’t give them the recognition they search for. When you see their provocative comments on social media, the best thing to do is probably ignore them. Never feed the roles. If you have, if you are a victim of hate speech

Or online shaming, it might be better to mute your account that is provocating you and harming you when you recognize the troll, immediately block and report it. So, you have to learn how to respond to the Facebook et cetera et cetera.

And it is better that you know you work in a group rather than in single. Let let your friends also join you in replying to such ah notes. And look after yourself very carefully. So these are some of the words

Would like to ah suggest to people to counter hack. At the same time ah there is too much of politics in all our rules and regulations. It is sometimes very difficult to keep a watch on all the atrocities that happen in the

Social media ah television and news media. Each country has to monitor its own social media and remove the apps in all those mobiles and ah cell phones who deal with abuses. Ah I feel the media is also paid to do ah hate speech. And

Generally hate speech weakens and destroys communities. Sowing seeds of fear, hatred and distrust. Ah when left unchecked it can lead to violence and even genocide. So ah when I am talking about the Hindus ah Hindus all around the world are generally soft

Spoken, a God fearing and they believe in their scriptures. Ah the term it means ah respect to all the religions and follow the paths accordingly and do what is right and fair. We I will ah in conclude with this statement that we have all we

We have and will always remain committed we as Hindus we will always remain committed to our guiding principle of Vasudaiva Kudumpakam that is the whole world is one family Means the whole world is one family. The diverse of the Hinduism is

Uniquely beautiful and the principle of meaning leading those benighted by ignorance to the light through equation and genuine mutual learning. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much for this reminder about hate speech and how we can react and on all

These concrete examples that you share even though some of them are very painful but I think that it’s very important to highlight them and to discuss about them. So, thank you Doctor Lakshmi for joining us. We are glad to have you

With us and you definitely contribute with your speech and especially highlighting from your Hindu perspective which is highly appreciated and now we have about 15 more minutes left so I will now give Floor back to Amina because she mentioned

That she has some more question for other panelists and the time is really running when you have this nice discussion but Tamina Floor is yours and let’s discuss about few more things that were on your mind. Thank you, Layla. Thank you very

Much. Um and as you said like I really had a lot of questions that I wanted to ask our panelists. And my second question will go to the corner of Friends because we know that rents as a psychologist. He

Works a lot with people on on mental health. And mental health is also connected to hate speech at some point. So I wanted to ask you how does hate speech actually affect our mental health? But both of those who are you know target

Of the hate speech but also of those who are perpetrating hate speech. I think in conversations about hate speech, we tend to discredit people who are perpetrating it. We don’t speak about it. So, how does, you know, all of that

Hatred that we try to perpetrate also affects us and what we can do about it. I know a question is probably too wide and you could pick hours about it but please give us some of your thoughts about it. Thank

You. Let me try to to do that in a few minutes so you can ask the other questions that you have. Um The effect first on those who are targets or victims of hate speech. Um since hate speech incites violence, it incites

Discrimination in in in hatred towards a certain individual. That person experiences severe threats. Um and varying degrees. And this threat becomes not just a threat to their lives but also a threat to their dignities. Now when each of us are facing threats

That causes us significant amount of stress. Um and worst part of that would be what we call traumatic stress or trauma in in simple terms. And whenever we are traumatized that causes negative impacts in the way that we think, the way

That we feel, and the way that we relate with other people. Um, some of our panelists mentioned that, hate speech has caused depression, suicide is actually the second leading cause of death among young people all over the world. Um,

It’s not even, I, actually now, it’s the leading cause of that. And a lot of that come, comes from hate speech as well. Because, it it removes your sense of humanity. It pulls down your self-esteem. And of course you’re afraid for your

Life. So it it causes you to hide in fear. So it causes many of these negative impacts on an individual that often leads to many long term complications in their emotional and psychological well-being. Now we do not usually talk about perpetrators of hate speech.

But when we try to understand where all that hatred is coming from we also need to look at the cycle of violence and the cycle of hatred that exists. Uh are theories that explain that someone who might be bullying or abusive of someone else

Themselves may have experienced a form of abuse or violence or bullying. So the human mind basically learns what it observes. So if you as a young child for example grows up in an environment that fosters violence, hatred, and all of

These things. You learned that that’s the normal way of doing things. So if you grow up in a household where your parents for example throws violent curses with one another. They disrespect one another. You learn that that is the way to

Deal with other people. And it it continues. Okay? For you you become a victim of it. You start victimizing other people. Those you victimize will start victimizing other people. So it’s a never ending cycle that perpetuates violence and

Hatred. So when we look at that perspective as much as we would like to say that we condemn those who are doing hate speech. If we ourselves condemn them then what makes us different from them, right? If they’re doing hate speech and

You respond with hate speech we’ll never achieve the goal of ending hate speech. That’s why we respond with love. We respond with understanding, with empathy, with care. All of this because we try to understand that this human being is starting to promote

Hate because they may be hurt. In in my practice as a clinical psychologist, we often say that hurt people hurt people. So, maybe try to understand where they’re coming from. And then understand that pain Give them love. Give them care, empathy,

And understanding. Maybe that way we can help them change the way they do things. I hope I answered your question. I mean it’s quite a short time but I hope I was able to explain that. Thank you very much friends. As as you said it’s

Very short time but this is coming from you as as somebody who’s working a lot with people with you know a mental health I’m sure that our viewers now will you know take this into account because as you said, it’s always easy to just start

Judging and it’s always easy to just start, you know, somehow pushing back, but instead of trying to put yourselves in the, a style set, sometimes the shoes are not always easy to put ourselves in, and it’s not always easy to understand, but

Anyways, thank you very much, and I think you provided very, very clear, very concise answer in such a short time, and, I really appreciate it. Uh, and third question will go to the Sally’s corner because I would like to ask you a bit more

Because you you were mentioning a lot intergenerational cooperation and you were mentioning a lot what you were doing in URI but can you tell us how effectively we can actually you know foster and and go forward with this intergenerational approach. How

We can meaningfully include young people because you were mentioning precisely that you know unfortunately you put young people in people very often feel as talk of and somebody just to brag about them. We have them. Uh so what what would be yours let’s say

Some kind of advices or tips and tricks for for all of us working in this especially in the interfaith spaces because I think these spaces are super important and it’s very very important that we connect those on the seniors with the with

The younger ones and and you know provide the space for for exchange. Um and we are already exchanging on an interfaith basis but what about this generational one. Thank you. Again, not so much time to answer but please, the floor is

Yours. Yeah. well, thank you, Amina. It is so much easier to talk about it than to do it and to make the changes. Um I’ll just say a few things when we were doing that project. One elder gentleman in my age

Group, he said, you know, I humbly, he was humble and open and he said, I really don’t understand the challenges that the twenty Five year olds are facing. I’m curious. I really want to know. So for elders check your curiosity. Do you really want

To know what’s inside a person who’s in their 20s or in their 30s right now. What’s going on? What their their fears are. What their hopes are. So that struck me as something that isn’t about a manual. It’s just about giving true curiosity Um

I what Elder the other thought that we did and I think it was Tahil. This appreciative inquiry, this way of creating a condition where you really are asking each other questions. In that same manner, about who, you know, who you are and what

You, where you have been your best in your life, on both sides. So, within an organization, for instance, we think we can just sort of notice it and then, it’ll kind of get better. But I don’t think so. I think you have to

Make it a priority and and bring people of different age groups in this case into these kinds of conversations where they are asked to tell each other about their stories, about their life issues, and then be listened to. Um this

Book, this toolkit, go to it. It has very practical answers to just these questions. They point out myths And then in assumptions and then they point out what the reality is and then they also it also gives what you can do to bring people

Together. So, I think I’ll stop there and really refer people to that toolkit. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sally. Um I already shared the link to the toolkit on our Facebook comments below the this very panel discussion that is live

Streamed so I do hope that people will have the opportunity to see it yesterday. I saw it. It was very nice nicely done and it’s very you know very lively and very youthful and with all of those colors and and you know,

As you said, very very practical recommendations on how to meaningfully include young people and I think more resources like that are very very much needed and more conversations like this are much needed because intergenerational operation is something that we are

Definitely speaking and we are definitely doing a lot about in the lawsuit years I would say. I think it wasn’t that prominent before but in the last few years it became very important that we need to work together in order to let’s say

Somehow confirmed and face all the issues that that this planet and we as human beings on it are facing. So these intergenerational perspectives are super important. So my another my fourth question which is going in the corner of Doctor Lakshmi. Uh we’ll be you

Know about this cooperation between youngsters and between seniors and about hate speech and about you know these initiatives countering hate speech. So can you tell us you know if you’re familiar with some of these kinds of corporations and you know if

You are familiar and if you have worked because I know that you had you have a lot of experience in this and I had the opportunity to be on one forum that is concerning hate speech against migrants and refugees and I had the

Opportunity to work with you. Uh so maybe you can just give us a few inputs and hints about the initiative that you worked on. Thank you. Please unmute yourself. Yes, I have been working on with the migrants and refugees, not personally but on their

Work and how we can support them. Ah so culturally, cultural diversity in Europe should be taken as an advantage. Ah and celebrated instead of being seen it as negative thing. That is number one. And secondly ah migrants and refugees ah they have miss

Perceptions and misunderstanding regarding the laws, customs and conditions in their host country. You know because they come from different places. These gaps can be reduced by promoting their participation. Moreover their full non intervention decisions that have an impact

On their lives. So I mean we keep it keep the migrants at a distance. Instead cooperate them in the you know take them in your work and in you know in make them more and more inclusive. That would help a

Lot. So my request to each and every person. Mix with the variety of people. Much different from you. Ah may be difficult in the beginning but it is very important for religious leaders and important ah ah both you know people holding good portfolios. That

Ah they it’s ah they mix with a variety of people. Ah political leaders and managers to know different kind of people and rediscover your relationship and make life happy for everyone. So, if you mix, for example, people travel all

Around the world and they have different kind of food. But why not mix with different kind of people and enjoy their food, you know, going to their house or restaurants or something like that. So, that’s, that’s sort of an attitude has to

Develop all round. So, valuing multiculturalism is an important aspect of ah ah you know hate speech and abuse abusive speeches. it’s very important that every become, everyone should start liking or or or at least in start doing a sort of a multicultural group

Work or something like that which will bring people together. Where every every religion is a different but they have some common things and and finally we are all human beings. You know we are not in you know any other persons. We are all human

Beings. So, why can’t we come together? If we make an effort, definitely we can. Thank you, Doctor Lakshmi. Thank you for this, let’s say, call, call to people for coming together and basically asking ourselves if we are coming and if we are

Human beings and why can we just come together and and understand each other but thank you for addressing this issue of hate speech against migrants and refugees because Europe for the past year was you know, all entangled in this you know, a

Lot of people were migrating from different parts of the world to Europe. So Europe was facing this. And a lot of hate speech was rising there. Uh I had the opportunity to work on several initiatives in Bosnia Herzegovina which is just small

Country on the route. Um on the migrant route and not a lot a lot of migrants coming but still there is you know boiling hate speech because it’s something unknown. It’s something that we don’t know and it’s something that we you

Know are as you said like not trying to understand not trying to to come as human beings and understand what those people actually went through to to come to our country and you know what kind of road and path

They had to go through. And you know you you just have to understand what is what what can happen to you that you have to leave your home to go somewhere else. You know this is the question that mostly we

Don’t ask ourselves when we are working with refugees and migrants and this is something that we we should definitely think of. So Layla I finish with my questions and I have a lot of them now but yeah it’s

Already 6: 30 PM in my in my place and it’s very late in Philippines so I would like to you know send back send rents to go to sleep. And for the sake of time I will just hand you over to wrap up the finish

And thank you very much again. Thank you very much Amina. Yes as I said when we have this nice discussion always time runs really quickly and there’s so many open questions but there there is beauty in this because then have chance to

Meet again and to continue a discussion and to open floor for discussion in online. See you again. So I would just like to thank all of you for participating, for giving you a very valuable inspo for being such a great inspiration and

Not just inspiration but for all this call for action and I hope this all our viewers will learn something that they already learn something from this and then they will take action after this and so according to all your suggestions all your nice

Inputs. I want to invite all of those viewers who are watching us right now to step outside of their comfort zone, to try to be more empathic, active listening and now to go outside if it is not too late in the

Airplane and maybe to meet somebody that they didn’t have chance to meet earlier. So as you all said, may peace prevail on earth and let all us come together for the sake of the peace, justice and healing. So thank you once again and thanks

All of those of you who are watching on Facebook and especially thank you for all of you who woke up early in the morning to join us and who stayed late in the evening. It shows how dedicated you are for

This work and I’m sure with all of your efforts and passion and knowledge that we will bring some more positive change to this world. So thank you again and thank you Amina for co-hosting this event. Thank you.

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