by MICHAEL ENRIGHT talks to KARIMA BENNOUNE
Increasingly frustrated at the negative discourse surrounding Muslims worldwide, international human-rights lawyer and activist Karima Bennoune, set out on an epic journey spanning 30 countries, to change the conversation PHOTO/Florence Low
From Karachi to Tunis, Kabul to Tehran, ordinary Muslims are risking death to combat the rising tide of fundamentalism in their own countries.
Despite their courage and creativity, this global community of writers, artists, doctors, musicians, museum curators, lawyers, activists, and educators of Muslim heritage, remains largely invisible.
November 25, 2013. Two explosions kill 17 and wound 37 in a Baghdad neighbourhood where insurgents linked to al Qaeda carry out regular bombing campaigns.
October 27, 2013. A roadside bomb kills 14 women, 3 men and a child in Kabul. Roadside bombs are the Taliban’s weapon of choice.
December 8, 2011. Zarteef Afridi, a Pakistani teacher who campaigned for the rights of tribal women, is gunned down by Islamist extremists while walking to school.
These are the headlines we are used to hearing.
Here’s another picture.
In 2008, on the eve of a huge music and puppet festival for children, promoter Faizan Peerzada received a blood-stained warning from fundamentalists – stop, or else.
He went ahead with his plans. 18,000 people were in the stadium in Lahore, Pakistan when three bombs went off. 9 people were injured.
Despite continuing threats, Mr. Peerzada re-mounted the festival two years later. Thousands of children and their families came back.
Mr. Peerzada, and others like him, are the Muslims Karina Bennoune wants us to know about.
Ms. Bennoune travelled the world for two years, visiting 30 countries and speaking to nearly 300 people. She met with housewives, actors, teachers, lawyers, doctors and academics — ordinary Muslims who are standing up to extremism in their own countries.
Listen to her interview on CBS