A study from 2014 showed that 99% of domestic terrorist plots in the US are aided in some way by the FBI; only 4 out of 400 were not FBI stings. And human rights groups found that the way the sting operations are conducted violate human rights. Sue Udry of Defending Dissent will speak about the ways these sting operations have been used to fuel hatred against Muslims. And to discuss the shooting and mass murder in Orlando, FL, Janaid Ahmad of Just International and Peace for Life speaks about the rise of homophobia and violence within Muslim communities because of Western influence and support for extremist sects such as the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia.
Guests:
Sue Udry is Executive Director of the Defending Dissent Foundation.
Sue won her high school’s “Best Citizen” award in 1978 and has been working to earn that title ever since. She played a leadership role in her campus peace group, and after grad school she began knocking on doors in neighborhoods around the country as a canvasser for SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, now Peace Action. She has been the Executive Director of the Defending Dissent Foundation since 2008. Prior to joining DDF, she served as the executive director of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights and as an organizer for the Coalition for New Priorities and the Day Care Action Council of Illinois. She was the legislative coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of over 1,600 groups opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She currently serves on the board of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms and the National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy, as well as the Advisory Board of the Charity and Security Network. She is a co-founder of the Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition and treasurer of the D.C. chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
Over a quarter of a century working for peace and social justice in Washington, DC, Illinois and Indiana, has taught Sue that the right to dissent is crucial to expanding democracy, promoting justice, and enlarging the global human rights perspective.
Janaid S. Ahmad is based in Lahore, Pakistan where he is the director of the Center for Global Dialogue. He has a Juris Doctor (law) degree from the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA. He is currently a Ph.D candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and is also a faculty member of the Faculty of Law and Policy, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan. He served as president of the US-based National Muslim Law Students Association (NMLSA), and is on the board of the Muslim Peace Fellowship. He is a board member of Muslim Men against Domestic Abuse (MMADA). He served on the Executive Board of the Domestic Violence Resource Project. In the US, he worked with the National Interfaith Committee on Social Justice, and Amnesty International. In Pakistan, he worked with such groups as Educate Pakistan and AMAL Human Development Network. He continues to maintain an association with Positive Muslims, the Cape Town-based organization working on issues related to Muslims, HIV/AIDS and gender justice, a group with which he worked while he was in South Africa. His research interests include Islam in the public sphere, interfaith relations, globalization, and civil society, and has lectured and written extensively on these topics. He is currently working on a collaborative project with the International Islamic University – Islamabad (IIU-I) on globalization, Muslim societies and Islamic revivalism. Mr. Ahmed has been a long time human rights activist.