ISLAMABAD: Education holds key to emancipation of women, said former South Asian analyst at the US Commission on International Religious Freedom Safiya Ghori.

She was speaking at a seminar on ‘Women’s Emancipation and Islamic Ideological Framework’ on Tuesday. The seminar was organised by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in collaboration with the US Embassy.

Ghori said that it was wrong to assume that Islam preached its believers to persecute women. She said suppressing women and giving them sufferings were the traits of a patriarchal society and these had no links with Islam.

She said that Muslims should be vocal about whatever they believe and they should put their message across to others. She termed it a public relations problem that the Muslims failed to communicate their beliefs and convictions to people of other religious communities.

She said that since Islam was not interpreted in real sense, there were many misconceptions about the religion, Muslims and Pakistan in the US and other western countries. She called for the making of an Islamic ideological framework to address issued faced by the Muslims.

She underscored the need for presenting the true humane face of Islam to the world in order to do away with these misconceptions and glorify the religion that rightly deserves admiration.

Alluding to the interviews of young Muslims published in an American newspaper recently, she said the youngsters talked about how it was normal for them to remain Muslims and play baseball, basketball and other sports at the same time like other human beings.

She said that it was wrong to believe that women are suppressed in Islam. She said that when she was adviser to the Obama administration on religious minorities, she tried to dispel this impression and stressed that it is a matter of choice for the Muslim women to wear veil or not.

Mome Saleem from SDPI said that men also had rights and there was a need to accord equal importance to their rights as well. She stressed gender equality in this respect.

Earlier, Will Wades from the US Embassy made introductory remarks.

In the question hour session, a lawyer said that not women only but children and poor were also exploited in the Pakistani society. He said that Taliban did not know the real Islam. He stressed the need for attaining rights of fair sex in the light of Islamic teachings and commandments.Daily times