Religion

Chiedo Nwankwor, vice dean of education and academic affairs, and director of SAIS Women Lead at Johns Hopkins University, and Ebenezer Obadare, the Douglas Dillon senior fellow for Africa studies at CFR, discuss how religion and gender affect politics and policy in West Africa. Katherine Marshall, senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and professor of the practice of development, conflict, and religion at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, moderates. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program. FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar series. The Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar series convenes religion and faith-based leaders in cross-denominational dialogue on the intersection between religion and international relations. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. As a reminder, this webinar is on the record. The audio, video, and transcript will be available on CFR’s website, CFR.org, and on the iTunes podcast channel, Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have Katherine Marshall with us today to moderate our discussion on the politics of religion and gender in West Africa. Katherine Marshall is a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and leads the center’s work on religion and global development. She is also a professor of the practice of development, conflict, and religion in the Walsh School of Foreign Service. She teaches courses on ethics of development work and mentors students at many levels. And she was just appointed as a member of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid at the U.S. Agency for International Development. With five decades of experience in a variety of development issues in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East, particularly those faced by the world’s poorest countries, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of CFR’s Religion Advisory Committee. So Katherine, thanks for all that you do. I’m going to turn it over to you to introduce our distinguished speakers and to moderate the conversation before we turn to the group for their questions and comments. MARSHALL: Thank you and good afternoon. It’s a pleasure to be here to discuss a particularly important, interwoven set of issues on this, which is the Day of the Girl Child. So we have two very experienced and provocative speakers today. First we have Chiedo Nwankwor, who is the vice dean of education and academic affairs, and director of the SAIS Women Lead at Johns Hopkins University. Her primary specializations are comparative politics with a focus on African politics, and women and gender studies. And her research and teaching interests include women’s political participation with an emphasis on ministerial-level politics in Africa, women’s health and health policy, feminism, international relations, and the political economy of gender in Africa. Dr. Nwankwor’s work has been published in a variety of journals, and she coedited a book on the Nigerian National Assembly. She is a fellow of the Center for Democracy and Development in Nigeria and consults for the World Bank, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and Premium Times Nigeria. We also have Ebenezer Obadare, who is the Douglas Dillon senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before joining CFR, he was a professor of sociology at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Dr. Obadare is also a senior fellow at the New York University School of Professional Studies Center for Global Affairs, as well as a fellow at the University of South Africa’s Institute of Theology. He was the Ralf Dahrendorf scholar and Ford Foundation international scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dr. Obadare was a political reporter for The News and TEMPO magazines and a lecturer in international relations at the Obafemi Awolowo University. His primary areas of interest are civil society and the state, and religion and politics in Africa. And Dr. Obadare is the author and editor of numerous books. His most recent is titled Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Nigeria. So you see we have a vast array of experience here on a topic which is very much interwoven, and affects, I think, the national and local level, the Africa-wide level, but also the global level. And we’re listening, I think, to a lot of African voices this week during the World Bank-IMF annual meetings that are taking place in Washington. So why don’t we start with Ebenezer. Why don’t you sort of—why is religion important particularly? What’s it got to do with gender, and what’s it got to do with politics? Where do we start in unraveling these issues? OBADARE: Thank you, Katherine. Thank you for having me. I’m going to—let me, maybe on a broadly philosophical note, maybe just to offer reminders why it’s important to take women seriously. And I think for me it always goes back to the question of—so the question of how much progress a given society has made on the path towards social equality, a question that is often posed in different times. I think for me is best answered with a different sort of question, which is: How free are women in that society? And you can sort of break down that into further subdivisions. How much control do women in that given society have, all things considered, over their lives and bodies, including—among other things—like sexual and reproductive rights, right to own property, right to dispose of property, right to education. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness—the whole nine yards. So I think it’s the question of how much social equality you have in society can be approached from the much more fundamental question for me is: How free are women in that society? So that—I think that’s sort of to state the broad parameters of the conversation. But what is felt toward religion and gender itself, I think one thing to note is it’s a paradox that while religious ideology is often an obstacle or an impediment to the realization and enjoyment of some of the rights I’ve just listed, women surprisingly find opportunities for social maneuvering within the spaces of religious institutions. And that enables them to challenge male domination. It doesn’t mean they are always successful, but sometimes they find those opportunities. So at any rate, it would seem generally unhelpful to speak of women as a homogenous category especially as we see on the ground that they are constantly divided along the lines of class, profession, education, access to power, and all of that. So a corollary of that point is that women’s role within the contexts of religious institutions—and I find this in the context of my own work—is so far ambivalent, so women are constantly swinging between disruption or revolt on the one hand, and stabilization and consolidation of religious institutions and religious ideology on the other. Well, let me quickly tie that all by taking those to a different region of the world right now because what is happening there pertains to what we are talking about in a West African context, so—which is that many of the issues at the intersection of religion and gender that we’re talking about today, they are currently on display in Iran—where women are in revolt against an Islamic theocracy that more or less operates like a panopticon that is fundamentalist, suspicious of individual agency and initiative, especially women’s initiative and individuality. And it’s not that we regard and treat women like children in permanent need of adult male supervision. The slogan of the protesters in Iran is a slogan that I think one ought to recommend to women in West Africa, women in every other region of the world: Women, Life, Freedom. I think the slogan itself is a reminder of what is at stake in conversations about religion and conversations about gender. MARSHALL: Great. Thank you so much. Chiedo, over to you. How would you frame the issue and the challenges that we’re facing? NWANKWOR: I thank you so very much for having me. I think Ebenezer said it all, but let me speak specifically to gender, right? And so, if by way of framing this, one would ask a couple questions like what is gender, and how does this shape women’s lives and experiences across the continent? Two, why are gender considerations critical for politics on the continent? Three, what has been changed, both in the discourse and the reality of gender relations in contemporary signs across the continent? And last, how has gender implicated pathways for outcomes of politics across the continent, right? And so when we talk about gender, I think often we just talk women, right, but we need to be sure that gender is not just women; gender represents learned behaviors and practices about what it means to be either male or female, right? So when we talk about gender we are talking about relative, core constitution of dynamics across the continent. So in a sense we are talking about culturally constructed ideas of what it means to be me, a female on the continent, and what it means to be Ebenezer as a male on the continent, right? So it’s not so much about male-female as it is about masculinity and femininity and how those characteristics shape and define what it means to be a man or a woman. And because these are socially constructed, right, they are contextual; they vary from place to place and from time to time. For example, gender will therefore account for what women and other people considered feminine, particularly across the continent but not uniquely across the continent because we know that these are global dynamics, right—usually subordinated and invisible. So why is gender consideration critical for politics on the continent? Because primarily it should [give] access to power and influence, right? It shapes the citizenship rights and status. And it informs public policy and access to resources, right? So it’s critical because, particularly across the continent, gender is the master identity, of hegemonic proportions. So to the extent that identity consists of repertoires of categories and roles for organizing cells within a society, gender is a master identity across the continent. So gender is primary in—it’s a primary identifying characteristic of an individual, often the most important constituent in an individual’s identity, and is therefore at the core of social identity, and influences roles and behaviors. So I, on the continent, will primarily identify first as a woman, right? Ebenezer will primarily identify as male before his ethnic and religious—or in reverse depending on what is most salient to him. And so this has real significant implications for public school mobilization. So for example, gender will intersect in very specific ways with religion as Ebenezer has said, and being male and Christian has different life outcomes for being male, than female and Christian. Being male and Muslim has different life outcomes for being female and Muslim, right? But more importantly while gender, as you have said, is hegemonic in terms of identity making and identity conferral, and while it stands at the origin of other differences and subordinations, its pervasiveness and universality makes it a less cohesive and potent base for collective identification and mobilization, kind of like religion, right? So in the case of religion and maybe ethnicity, you have this cohesiveness around geography, right? But gender is geographically separated and divided also by all these other identity categories. So class is also fragmented by ethnicity and religion. So for gender to be in any way, shape, or form, active, right, and successful as a form of political mobilization, it has to ally itself with other more cohesive identities to inspire collective consciousness and action. And so that is why gender becomes very key—critical for policies across the continent. MARSHALL: I’m interested in following up on one issue—that in many cases, religious communities or religious practices and beliefs are seen as anathema or hostile to women’s more active public roles, and there can be tensions between feminists who are so-called feminists and women who come with a religious identity. I’m curious as to whether you see anything along those lines in Africa. NWANKWOR: I think I missed the question. Do you want to just repeat this? MARSHALL: I’m asking about the religious role versus feminism. NWANKWOR: OK. MARSHALL: And the fact that, in many situations, feminist women who do not come from a religious perspective may be uneasy about religion and women’s religious roles, and vice versa where religious women are uneasy about feminism. And you’ve emphasized that it’s very contextual—it depends on the context. But if we’re trying to generalize about Africa, how might you look at that issue? NWANKWOR: So it’s—this is, as you rightly put it, a complex issue, right, because of the multiple imperfections of identities and subjectivities inherent in feminism and religion, and the imperfection of those. And again, it’s also to identify as to acknowledge that when we’re talking about these intersections—it’s not just religion and feminism—gender and feminism, it’s also the inherent and overlapping other identity markers, right, that strategically ally amongst themselves to adapt to what has become a rather problematic issue. So when we are talking about this, we typically go to ideas—traditional versus progressive ideas of womanhood and feminism, right? But it’s also to recognize that there is no fundamental contradiction between religion and feminism. If feminism is the strive for equality, male and female created He them, right? And so that’s typically, most times, is what is lost in this debate. And I would dare say that parts of this debate generated from patriarchal—(inaudible)—and patriarchal attempts to dislodge and disrupt the movement for gender equality, right, in creating in most instances—and this is not to say that we don’t have differences in interests—women’s interests—based on where women stand at their social locations on the spectrum. But it’s to say that despite these differences as a function of social location and positionality, that there are what we—and research—has seen to be collectivism of interest that connects women across the board. And so those then become the basis for cross-mobilizations, and most times we tend to focus on the differences that lead to policy paralysis rather than focusing on the commonalities that will drive some form of change in public policy and women’s empowerment. MARSHALL: Great. Ebenezer, let’s throw the question to you of trying to tease out a little bit some of the distinctive challenges, but also—we could also call them opportunities as well as distinctions within the African continent. What is—there’s a lot of data that shows Africa may be the most religious continent, whatever that means, and it also has some remarkable women, obviously, but also a lot of women who suffer. So I’m interested in your take on what—how you would point to things that are distinctive about Africa. OBADARE: So thank you for the question. I think maybe there are two things for me with respect to what we are saying right now. So the first one is about what you might call the fundamental frame of reference for people, and this is not just about gender. I think it cuts across your class, ethnicity, and all, identity markers—that for a majority of Africans, the fundamental frame of reference is still spiritual, and what do I mean by that? That when people think about power, when people think about authority, for instance, there’s always that general understanding. Not of who’s speaking, but the assumption that behind that power there is this other power that is ineffable, that is unsaid, but that has a road and often controls the things or the powers that you see. And I think that’s one element that fundamentally unite civil society and the state in Africa, a common subscription to that frame of reference. So that’s the first point. With respect to women, let me go back to one of the first—the initial points I made, which is that the spaces of religious institutions are very anti-women spaces in terms of how they allow women to exercise power. So on the one hand, you would expect that because these are notionally conservative spaces women would have no agency and that whatever agency they have would be diminished. That is often the case. But you also find out that sometimes it is within the parameters of those institutions that women are also able to affirm their own agency and challenge male domination. So the most interesting for me is the ambivalence of female agency within the context of religious institutions. There’s a chapter in my new book, the book that you mentioned, in which I sort of talk about this in my discussion of what I call “useless women.” “Useless women,” women who, according to the male gaze, according to male judgements, are not conforming to the norms that are associated with feminine behavior. So the point in the chapter in the book is to say that actually, within the context of this new religious movement in Africa, women are actually—women are often coming forward and challenging male pastoral power within those institutions. But also to make the point—and this is the paradox—that often that challenge is subverted and undermined not just by males, but also by other women within the context of those institutions. NWANKWOR: And so, if I may just follow up, so I think, Katherine, this is evidence of this strategic alliance, right, between gender and other salient careers by identity, religion, region, and even culture, right? So this strategic alliance maintains a chokehold on women’s ability to—women’s ability to be political agents across the continent. And what Ebenezer—I completely agree with what Ebenezer has just outlined, but I also think that we need to look at the temporality of these changes, and the waves of these changes in women’s agency across the continent in terms of disrupting political, religious, and patriarchal domination, right? So not to go back to precolonial women’s agency, but looking postcolonial and how that has married with—or feed into the women’s movements—the women’s and feminist movements. One would argue that this ongoing “uselessness of women,” so to speak, in quotes, right, as you argued, is a relatively emerging disruptive agency that women have taken upon themselves. And I would also argue that this has been shaped in a large extent by the advancements in information technology, particularly Twitter, Facebook, and all of that, because that has given women this agency and this—and given women this platform to be able to mobilize a defense against these structures. So, yes, we have a number of “useless women,” so to speak, growing out of Pentecostal and patriarchal domination. But we also have to kind of look at the emergence of this destructive agency and how that has been shaped by new advances in information technology. MARSHALL: And that also, of course, brings us to the question not only of distinctions and differences by context, but also how things are changing. What are the disruptive factors. But let’s turn now to questions from members. And, Riki, you’re going to guide us through that process. OPERATOR: Absolutely. Thank you, Katherine. (Gives queuing instructions.) It appears we don’t have any questions at the moment. So, Katherine, if you would like to follow up. MARSHALL: Great. Well, let’s follow up on the challenge that I as just putting to you, and maybe start with Ebenezer. Do you see, as Chiedo does, some of the major disruptions, linked particularly to information technology and to other factors? Including, I would also add, economic ups and downs, and some of the political turmoil that we’re seeing in parts of the continent? OBADARE: Yeah, I do. I mean, so one of the most interesting developments in Nigeria over the last twenty years for me, as a student of civil society, would be the “End SARS” protests of October 2020. For those who may not know about that, that’s the mass protest against police brutality in Nigeria. SARS was the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, that was visiting violence on every—on citizens. So why is that important? So it’s important because if you look at the iconic images from that—from those protests, one—there is one of Aisha Yesufu. The woman was in full hijab but who had the Statue of Liberty posture, basically challenging power and the state and authority, which I thought was quite interesting. But the other thing is that it was actually a group of women—and I’m blocking on their name now—I think it was, like, Nigerian Feminist Movement, something like that. I remember Jack Dorsey led sort of—people started donating money to them after Jack Dorsey brought what they were doing to popular attention. So inasmuch as that was a protest, and this is my point, about the use or the abuse of law enforcement against ordinary citizens, it also then became an opportunity for women themselves to say, hold on, we all suffer. That’s true. But women suffer doubly on account of their being women. So I thought that was really quite interesting. But the other thing is, as we are talking about gender, and to sort of circle back to some of the points that Chiedo made earlier, is that it was also an important moment not just for women but for LGBT individuals, right? And I think that was one element of the protest that hasn’t quite received as much attention as one would imagine that it should. That it was a moment where a few—a handful, but people emboldened by sort of the courage and the energy of the moment, LGBT individuals, who came out and said: It’s true that men are oppressed by law enforcement in Nigeria. It’s true that women are oppressed by law enforcement. Oh, what about us? We suffer untold hardship because we’re LGBT people, or we are perceived to be LGBT people.   Police stop us at random. They abuse us. They brutalize us. So in that context, the use of social media, the mobilization in the context of the opportunities and affordances of new digital spaces, I think women have been among the primary drivers of that. And I think it’s an important part of just the idea of civil society, not just in Nigeria but in other African contexts. MARSHALL: Yeah. I think we’re seeing that also in some of the peace and conflict issues, where there’s some interesting very innovative approaches that bring things together. We do have a question now that’s come in through the chat, from Charles Robertson. So let me read it, and then see who wants to answer it: The power of women leaders among the faith communities in Africa is a force to reckon with. Independent churches led by women are growing fast in Nigeria, Kenya, and even Uganda. While these women leaders may not identify with feminism, how could other women leaders globally inspire this new brand of women leaders to become an enduring and lasting change? I think that’s an interesting question about the leadership—distinctive kinds of leadership coming out of some of the religious traditions. So maybe, Ebenezer, you start. And maybe, Chiedo, you can see what reaction you have. OBADARE: So I agree, they’re absolutely important. And I think this is one of the sort of side benefits of Pentecostalism. To the extent that in doctrine, it’s highly deregulated. Meaning that anybody can just sort of say, I want to become a pastor, and all of that. And many women are embracing the opportunity. So I wrote about, what was the name of the woman again, Mummy G.O., in my blog, about, three or four months ago. But the point I would like to make, which I think is actually the depressing point, is that the fact that you have a woman as leader in a church does not necessarily mean—and you see this—are reminded of this often and again—that it doesn’t mean that the woman necessarily represents the interest of women. Oftentimes, because of the constraints and the strictures of religious spaces themselves, women are often playing other roles that are already predetermined, that are already delineated as masculine roles. So if you think about some of the female pastors, the most influential female pastors, Pentecostal pastors, in Nigeria right now, yes. It’s interesting that they are women. And oftentimes they talk about women’s rights. But most of the time, they operate within the strict confines of roles—the narrative already set by men. So one time actually—I think it’s not helpful to draw a straight line and say because you have a woman in a leadership role within a strict—religious context, that you then have somebody who necessarily represents the interests of women. That’s not always the case. MARSHALL: Chiedo, do you have any comment at this stage on some of these leadership issues? NWANKWOR: Right. So, two things. One, I think we need to also realize, inasmuch as there is a huge opportunity for global women leaders to inspire this brand of women religious leaders, I want us also to acknowledge that this idea of normative division from the West to the South is not—does not always hold true. And I would say, in this case the reverse is actually the case because across Africa, prior to precolonial times, women were in fact the keepers of the faith, right? And so with the disruption of colonialism, there’s been the institutionalization of women’s subordination across all the bodies of power, including the church. So I would say that, yes, there is—there are opportunities for global women leaders to inspire a continuation in this. But it’s also to take a step back to say that this trend has been indigenous to Africa, right? And so it continues. Secondly, just to echo what Ebenezer has said, there’s also a fundamental problem with assumptions around access. Women’s access to our bodies, our power, right? This assumption is that women’s inclusion in these bodies automatically dislodges the norms and regimes, and values and cultures that have set— traditionally set these bodies. Which have been created around this perspective, the male perspective, the male gaze, right? And male benefits. So, for example, in the church, like we said, the idea that women are now assuming pastoral leadership does not mean that their leadership automatically dislodges these dynamics. The same thing in political bodies—in some of our political bodies, right? The assumption that women’s inclusion and women sitting at the table automatically engenders a change in public policy is a bit of a fallacy, right? So that there is a need for sustained advocacy and activism, not just for the women leaders, because onus is not just on the women but on society at large. To continue to sustain advocacy and activism, right, to effect change in these norms and not just the automatic inclusion of women’s presence and the assumption that it does change things. MARSHALL: Right. Oversimplifying gets us into trouble every time. Riki, I think we have a question. OPERATOR: We do. Our next question comes from Jonathan Golden from Drew University. GOLDEN: Hi. Thank you so much. So perfect, just picking right up on the previous comment, because I do think it’s something different to say that there is leadership in separate religious communities, and then—but looking at it, it’s something different to say leadership within an interfaith movement, right? So my question is sort of what are the opportunities for the intersection of Muslim and Christian women, if we’re thinking, say, a Nigerian context or some of the other West African countries in particular, where Muslim and Christian women, and women even of others faiths—there are small Jewish populations in some of these countries as well—can actually find affinities with each other, and build that sort of movement? Because it does seem like there’s a growing interfaith movement, but that still seems to be—not that women don’t participate—but still may be dominated as you were just saying, with the older paradigm. And I also think of the famous example in Liberia, of the peace movement which was clearly an interfaith religious women’s movement, to end the war there. So just looking, what are the opportunities, specifically within an interfaith setting of women’s leadership, and to reach across the religious divide, and connect just as women at this sort of intersection? MARSHALL: Ebenezer, do you want to start on that? OBADARE: Yeah, yeah, sure. I can. It’s a great question. And my take is maybe slightly different. So I know where the question is coming from. So the question is coming from the specifics of particular societies where religious differences are sort of split the social fabric. And this is part of the solution that people are looking for, that if people are sort of holed up in their different religious communities, we must find a way to build bridges so that women or men from a particular religious community will be kept in touch with women or men from another religious community. So that thinking, and I think it’s a fair thing. But that will only work in places where religious identity is the primary identity that people mobilize, right? Because so if you think about the part of Nigeria I come from, which is western Nigeria, Yoruba, you’ll find that there’s a sense in which people’s identity as Yoruba, their ethnic identity, sometimes is—most of the time comes before every other—any other consideration. So you’re a Yoruba first, before you’re a Muslim or you’re a Christian. So the assumption itself that because people subscribe to different religious faiths that they are then in tension and do not connect, that assumption does not exactly work out in everyday life. So there are places where people—the fact that you’re a Christian and a Muslim, you have to sort of remind yourself—like they would be, oh, yeah, I forgot you’re a Muslim, or I forgot you’re a Christian. But the question becomes redundant in communities—and I don’t think this is just a western Nigerian thing—in communities where a master identity, if you will, an overriding cultural identity, supersedes the other kinds of identity. So it’s—I think that’s—that’s worth keeping in mind. I think Katherine is muted. Katherine, we can’t hear you. MARSHALL: Sorry. Chiedo, do you have further reactions on the interfaith or intra-faith, and women’s roles in that ecumenical or interfaith context? NWANKWOR: Yes. And I want to use the back and also the analogy of women’s distinct and different interest in political studies, right? Because at times, these kind of tend to overlap. And it’s to say that, for example, I am doing currently engaged in a project that seeks to explain why women remain marginalized in politics across Africa, right? And so it seeks to explain the intransigence of African—(inaudible)—in political—women’s political maximization. And the argument is that women’s continued marginalization derives from their inability to cross-mobilize, right, across—to mobilize across the various groups. And this is the same thing that the question is asking, is it impossible? Is it possible that women mobilize across the various states? Is it possible that women find common ground even within the distinctness and the differences in theologies and tenets—ideological, religious tenets, that women find commonalities that would bring them together? And like Ebenezer said, yes, absolutely it happens. We have evidence of that across. We have evidence of that in Nigeria as women continue to mobilize against the state. The various million women marches. This has been cross-mobilizations across religious women’s political participation across different parties. And the same thing happens. We have various interstate organizations mobilized by women across Africa. So the idea is, again, that cross-mobilization is impossible in interstate organizations. Again, it is one of the patriarchal narratives that has sought to continue to divide women to ensure that you don’t have this broad-based mobilization that will provide credible threats, right, to include that women are included—meaningful inclusion. MARSHALL: Yeah. There’s some very interesting, dynamic women who are leading interreligious activities both in Africa but also globally, coming from Africa. So the idea that through that means that women can help to transform what’s happening in their own communities. We have one question from—a written question from Celene Ibrahim and then another one coming in. So let’s first take this one: In terms of women’s roles in contemporary Nigerian politics, do you see any notable alliances between Christian-identified organizations and actors, and those who are Muslim-identified? How are Christian-Muslim tensions impacting women’s abilities to be in strategic alliances for political rights and representation? Do you see notable differences between women’s political representation between northern and southern Nigeria? That’s getting right into the specifics, so I guess we’ll throw that to Ebenezer. OBADARE: It’s a good question. It’s also a very complex question. And I think one of the things that I just would remind you of is that while women may have common economic interests, as they often do, they do not necessarily work under common political umbrellas, which I think is their right. And I think it sort of reinforces the point I was making earlier about the heterogeneity of women and why it would be unhelpful to sort of put all women under the same umbrella. So I think we can all say that for the most part women in Nigeria face common challenges. But they’re also divided along regional lines. They’re divided along ethnic lines. And they’re also divided across political lines. So in terms of a common front for women in terms of political representation, I don’t think any exists at the moment. Personally, I’m not even sure we need one, because the last thing you want—you want women often to be able to speak with the common voice who say, take us seriously. But in terms of—take our agency seriously. But in terms of how they approach that, how that breaks down, you also want women—want to give women the freedom to be able to pursue their own. So I’m sort of happy that there isn’t a single party that is accommodating of the interests of women in Nigeria. MARSHALL: Chiedo, do you want to get into the Nigeria complexities? NWANKWOR: Right. So I think the Nigerian case is a rather interesting case study, right? Both for its historical failure, so to speak, to include women. And when I say “failure,” I don’t mean necessarily women’s failure, but just the abysmal low representation of women across Nigeria, and also for the multiplicity of platforms for women’s mobilization across. But I do think that actually there’s been learned lessons, in the three, four decades of women’s attempts to mobilize. And in current times, like we’re saying, women are actually breaking down those walls. And we have a number of national women’s organizations. And I say national because these cut across ethnicities, they cut across religion, they cut across political parties. Because women have come to realize that this fragmentation of women across all these identity matters is, in fact, a strategy to ensure that women remain un-mobilized. Because if women are able to mobilize then they can drive a credible electoral threat that would actually cause political parties and the state to pay them attention. So it’s to say, yes, that, indeed, actually that we have some form of national women’s cross-mobilization on the continent. Now, how effective has that been is another story. MARSHALL: (Laughs.) Riki, do we have other questions coming in? OPERATOR: We have a written question from Dr. Mary Nyangweso. She asks: Can you highlight other challenges women face towards efforts to include gender equality, and especially political representation? Patriarchy is always cited, but it helps to outline implications of patriarchy. MARSHALL: Well, let’s start with Chiedo this time, and then go to Ebenezer. NWANKWOR: Right. So women face a myriad of challenges in accessing political power, particularly across the continent. But we must also realize that women have made dramatic strides, right, in accessing power, despite the odds, right? Despite the hydra-headed constraints, and discrimination, and oppression, women have actually pushed against all these challenges to achieve significance in some places, right? Political leadership. And so it’s sort of we don’t discount actually these achievements and these gender shifts in the composition of formal bodies. This is real. In fact, we know that Rwanda is the first in the world, at 61.3 percent, of women’s political representation in the lower house. And then you have five, six other countries on the continent who have surpassed 40 percent, right? And it’s just so that we know this. However, we still have countries like Nigeria that just has a 3.6 percent representation of women. So, yes, the challenges are myriad. One is with just lack of access to resources, both financial and material resources. And this becomes significant where political machinations and campaigns are finance-heavy, right? So where you have a commodification of elections, finances become key. And when you have women just abysmally reduced in their ability to access these resources, it becomes significant. And then you also have laws, right? You have regulations. You have norms. Part of that, women in the past have really mobilized to get these equality bills into the constitutional amendments, which have failed woefully. And so it’s, one, resources. Two, it’s laws and regulations. As Nigeria has also been unable to get some affirmative action for women’s political participation in the books. And then it’s also continuing social roles, right? Patriarchal ideas of what’s—of who a woman is, right? The woman’s place being in the house, and all of that. And this there intersects with religion, right, to have even greater implications and constraints. So women in the north, this is not to say that you don’t have agency—political agency among women in the north writ large. But it’s to say that in a large extent women in the north, right, find that they are more constrained than women in the south, in terms of political leadership, as a result of this strategic alliance between gender and religion. And I think I’ll leave some of the other parts of the story for Ebenezer to talk about. OBADARE: Thank you. I’ll just add one other element to that, which is access to education. I think this is extremely important. And I was going to talk about northern Nigeria as well. It’s where you have the lowest levels of literacy, the highest fertility rate, and the highest maternal mortality rate, all under the star of conservative Islamist ideology. And I think it’s important to talk about, because at the end of the day what it means is that you continually have generation after generation of women without basic education, without an understanding of how the system works. What you’re assuming is that those women are continually susceptible to the manipulation of men. So access to education, for me, I think is an extremely important thing. And women—the fact that, especially in the northern part of the country, because of conservative Islam, women are continually denied access to education, I think is an extremely important thing that warrants mediation. NWANKWOR: And so just on— MARSHALL: And the age of marriage. NWANKWOR: Right. MARSHALL: Age of marriage is obviously an important issue. NWANKWOR: So I wanted to say that, and violence, right? Gender-based violence. To the extent that that translates to political violence as a separate phenomenon also imposes very serious constraints on women’s access to power across continent, as a result of patriarchy. MARSHALL: I think a lot of good illustrations. Another one that we’ve heard is that women sometimes have an advantage by being basically invisible, or less visible, particularly this applies, I think, to Catholic sisters. But that also deprives them, as you’ve mentioned, of resources. So, Riki, I think you have another question for us. And we’re coming close to the end, so we’ll need to keep it fairly short. OPERATOR: Yes. We have time for one last question. And this question comes from Millicent Akinsulure , whose hand is raised. MARSHALL: Go ahead. AKINSULURE: OK. Can you hear me? OBADARE: Yes, we can. MARSHALL: Yes. AKINSULURE: I am going to ask—I am not a Nigerian, by the way. I’m Sierra Leonean. Have you seen any backlash against the men—I mean, against the women from the male parts against women priests? Because I noticed recently that female priests are rising up. I went to a function in which all the priests were women. And they are accepted by the male, and it’s rising. I just wondered if your studies if you’ve seen any reaction from the side of the male pastors or the men? OBADARE: Thank you. Do you want me to take that, Katherine? MARSHALL: Yes, go ahead. OBADARE: Yeah. So within the context of the Pentecostal churches that I study, I don’t think there has been any pushback, because the place of the men is secure. The leading Pentecostal pastors in the country are all male. They are all well-resourced. They have connections to power. They have transnational connections. They know all the statesmen and women out there. They have bottomless pockets. So there is no—to the extent that those women pastors are there, and that they are doing their own thing, the important thing is that they pose no challenge to the authority of the male pastors. So they are tolerated. MARSHALL: Chiedo, any comment? NWANKWOR: I completely agree. So, women play out—women pastors’ lives are written scripts within churches. You have to play out the script that has been given to you. Anytime you deviate from that script, it’s considered a challenge to the authorities and the status quo as they are. And most often the consequence—the logical consequences is swift and decisive. So that’s why most times you don’t have this backlash, because women stay in their places, even in those leadership roles in churches. MARSHALL: We’re coming very close to the end. So, let’s see, Ebenezer, do you have any final question or thought? And then Chiedo. And then I’m afraid we’ll have to close this fascinating discussion. NWANKWOR: My final thought would be I think it’s extremely interesting that we’re having this conversation. And we’re having it on the International Day of the Girl Child. I think it’s something that everybody should think about. But more important, I want to call our attention—as I did earlier in my preliminary remarks—to what is going on in Iran. Women in Iran are organizing around the banner of women’s life and freedom. Everywhere we are we should support them. We should support them not because they are Iranian women, but because the principles that they are articulating and championing and losing their lives over are the same principles that women in Africa and other places are articulating, championing, and losing their lives over. MARSHALL: Chiedo. NWANKWOR: And so just to add to that, I think it’s also important that as we discuss these identity categories, particularly gender, and how it shapes women’s political mobilization, and the fact that there’s been significant increase in women’s access to these organizations, to these bodies that we also do not forget the fact that we need to move this discussion beyond just numbers, right? And look at continuing to lobby and pressure for a kind of transformative model of leadership that moves just beyond the rhetoric of presence, right, to empowering women in these organizations to actually push for systemic change. To the extent that these changes then become real for ordinary women, for whom these representations are—(inaudible)—so it’s to move the conversation beyond we want more women to not just women. Women, yes, but also principal actors, and to create women’s policy agencies and missionaries, right, and build all these bridges to these women as well as other critical actors in these bodies, to ensure that public policies change. And not just that public policies change, but that there is implementation of the change in public policy so that we close the loop around public change to affect lives. MARSHALL: Well, thank you, both. Those are very strong final statements that, I think, highlight, first of all, the direction that we all are hoping to move in, or determined to move in, but also some of the subtleties and the nuance that takes use beyond platitudes into some of the hearts of the issues, but also the policy implications. So thank you, all. Happy day of the girl child. And hope to see you all again, soon. OBADARE: Thank you. NWANKWOR: Thank you, Kathrine.  

In Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Nigeria, Ebenezer Obadare examines the overriding impact of Nigerian Pentecostal pastors on their churches, and how they have shaped the dynamics of state-society relations. The CFR Fellows’ Book Launch series highlights new books by CFR fellows.

Steven A. Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at CFR, and Martin S. Indyk, distinguished fellow at CFR, discuss the future of the U.S.-Saudi relationship and President Biden’s July visit. Laura Trevelyan, anchor of BBC World News America, moderates. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program. FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar series. Happy fall, everybody. I am Irina Faskianos, vice president for the National Program and Outreach here at CFR.   As a reminder, this webinar is on the record and the audio, video, and transcript will be made available on CFR’s website, CFR.org, and on the iTunes podcast channel Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Laura Trevelyan here to moderate today’s discussion on U.S.-Saudi Relations. Laura Trevelyan is the anchor of BBC World News America. She was the BBC’s UN correspondent from 2006 to 2009, and a political correspondent for BBC News in the United Kingdom, where she began her BBC career reporting from Northern Ireland on the Good Friday Agreement. She has reported on humanitarian and peacekeeping work in Haiti, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and on many U.S. elections. And she is the author of two books and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  So I’m going to turn it over to her now to introduce our speakers and moderate the conversation before we go to all of you for your questions and comments. So, Laura, thanks for doing this and over to you.   TREVELYAN: Thank you very much, indeed, Irina. Thank you so much to everybody who is joining this conversation, which I think will also become a discussion. Thank you to the Council for this invitation. So, yes, we’re going to talk today about the future of U.S.-Saudi relations, informed particularly by the light of President Biden’s July visit to the kingdom. And who better to guide us through this discussion than our panelists.   We have Steven Cook. He is the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa studies, and director of the International Affairs Fellowship for tenured international relations scholars at the Council on Foreign Relations, a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine, and expert on Arab and Turkish politics, as well as U.S.-Middle East policy, and the author of many books.   We’re also joined by Martin Indyk, who’s a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as the U.S. special envoy, of course, for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from 2013 to 2014. He was also a U.S. ambassador to Israel, an advisor to President Clinton, a member of the National Security Council. Also author of numerous books.   Now, Steven and Martin coauthored a Council Special Report on the subject of U.S.-Saudi relations—which, if you haven’t read it, I would thoroughly recommend it—and they make the case in it for a new U.S.-Saudi strategic compact. Now, they wrote that ahead of President Biden’s—or, around the time of President Biden’s visit. So we can talk about what they’re suggesting there and how it’s all worked out. But first of all, I would just—before we get to the future of U.S.-Saudi relations, because the past informs the present, we’re going to start with the past. And I should say that at about twenty-five past 1:00, I will end my discussion with Steven and Martin and open up the floor for questions from all of you.    But first of all, Steven, I’d just like to ask you, I found this really so interesting, the backdrop that you lay out, to the, if you call it, a close if uneasy relationship for some three-quarters of a century between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. But in the beginning, it was all about oil, wasn’t it?   COOK: That’s quite right. First of all, thank you so much, Laura, for presiding over this session. And thanks to everybody who’s called in. And it’s great to be with my coauthor, Martin Indyk, who is just an accomplished and skilled diplomat. And he used those skills getting this—getting this report out. So was extremely, extremely helpful to us. Indeed, the relationship has been essentially based on, first, America’s commercial interests in the Gulf, and in particular in Saudi Arabia, dating back to the 1930s. And then after 1971, with the British withdrawal east of Suez, the United States became increasingly involved in the Persian Gulf. And the prime directive, the prime reason why the United States was so—became so directly involved over the course of between 1971 up through 1991, and then on through the subsequent thirty years, is primarily because of oil. The Middle Eastern oil was critical to the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. Seventy-five percent of the oil used in the Marshall Plan came from the Persian Gulf. The vast majority of it was from Saudi Arabia. And in the decade of the 1950s, stretching in the 1960s, about 85 percent of Europe’s oil came directly from Saudi Arabia. The idea that you needed to have a functioning capitalist West to insulate Europe—and the stability of Europe was of critical importance to the United States—you needed to have Middle Eastern oil to have successful economies in Western Europe. And thus was the American interest in Saudi Arabia and the continued free flow of energy resources not just from that region but from—not just from that country but from the region more generally. In exchange, the United States increasingly provided security to Saudi Arabia. And that’s really the basis of the relationship. My former colleague Rachel Bronson wrote a book in which she explained how the Saudis played a critical role during the Cold War in their own anti-communism. But at its basis, this was an oil for security relationship. In recent years it’s been oil for security for weapons relationship.  But once again, that is a function of the fact that Saudi Arabia has been such an important producer, the swing producer, of oil and, as we’ve seen most recently, the one country that had the ability to produce more oil relatively quickly and cheaply to make a difference in the global oil market, and subsequently what Americans pay at the pump. The Saudi leadership chose not to go that route, however, despite President Biden’s request, but we’ll get into that. TREVELYAN: We certainly will get into that. So thank you for that backdrop. And, Martin, if you could just bring us up to date, perhaps, and just tell us why you and Steven wanted to lay out the case for a new U.S.-Saudi strategic compact? And if you could sum up what that is. INDYK: Thank you, Laura, for hosting us today. The basic compact that Steven described, which was oil for security, is one that has essentially be shaken by recent developments in U.S. and Saudi policies. The United States essentially drawing down in the region, ending its involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were seen to have been highly counterproductive, focusing on more pressing geostrategic threats from Russia—an aggressive Russia in Europe, and a rising China in Asia, becoming, in the views of the Saudi leadership, a much less reliable guarantor of its security. And on the other side, the United States, looking at a new leadership in Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, and seeing a young, brash, ruthless, headstrong leader more likely to get Saudi Arabia and the United States into trouble than to serve as a reliable partner. Taking his country and the rest of the GCC states into a war in Yemen that was highly destructive of Yemen and caused a dramatic humanitarian crisis and worsened Saudi Arabia’s security situation. A siege of Qatar—neighboring Qatar which broke apart the GCC and essentially pushed Qatar into the hands of a waiting Iran. All of these things and more, particularly the way in which MBS—as he came to be known—was treating his own dissenters within Saudi Arabia. In particular his ordering of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident journalist.  All kind of combine to raise real questions on the part of the Saudis in terms of the reliability of the United States, and on the part of the United States in terms of the reliability of the Saudis. And all of this comes at a time when the oil market is in a particular tight situation, when the expectation that the world would no longer need as much oil because we were shifting to sustainable energy sources, turned out to be wrong, that calculation. And for the next thirty years, the expectation is we’re going to need more of Saudi Arabia’s oil, not less. And on the other side, the rising threat from Iran and the sense of insecurity that the Saudis felt led to a situation which we both need each other to be responsible partners, and yet we’re not. And that’s why we felt the need for a reinvention of the relationship and a new understanding and a new strategic compact. TREVELYAN: OK. But of course, Steven, a major problem with this issue or this idea of the need for a new strategic compact is that, as Martin was saying there, the crown prince has shown himself to be a ruthless leader. The U.S. intelligence agencies concluded with high confidence that he ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. So this is the backdrop against which President Biden goes to visit the kingdom in July, the famous fist bump takes place. Steven, what did President Biden get for that visit? COOK: Well, not much, it turns out. I think that there were expectations going into the visit that both—American officials publicly and privately intimated that there would be some sort of deal with regard to the oil markets. In exchange, the United States would work and help to enhance Saudi security and become involved directly in ensuring Saudi security, in some way. Not necessarily providing an American security guarantee, but nevertheless would be, after years in which the Saudis had questioned American commitment, that the United States would provide evidence that it remains committed to Saudi security. In the end, the Saudis did not end up pumping more oil. They announced in August a very modest increase of about a hundred thousand barrels. And they’ve actually announced just the other day that they are going to reduce by another hundred thousand barrels. They keep saying that this is based on their assessment of where the market is, and that they are not going to be dictated by the politics, or the geopolitics, in which the United States has sought to isolate the Russians. Russia has become an important partner of Saudi Arabia’s in what’s called OPEC+. So what you get after the president’s visit is, as I said, a miniscule increase in oil, an American commitment in the form of sending Patriot missile batteries to Saudi Arabia, further discussion of security cooperation between the two countries, and agreements to cooperate on a variety of what I think colloquially we would call small ball type stuff. Cooperating on 5G and 6G, the next generation of cell. I think perhaps the most important thing coming out of the visit, and something that was sort of baked into it ahead of time, was the Saudi agreement to allow Israeli airliners to traverse Saudi airspace. Not just going through Bahrain and UAE, but traveling to Asia, an important step towards normalization. Everything else doesn’t make a lot of sense to me why the president made the trip. He did go and it wasn’t just a meeting with Saudi officials. He participated in what’s called the GCC+3 meeting, the plus three being Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan, as a way of planting the flag and demonstrating to America’s partners in the region that it remained in the region and that it wasn’t leaving. This was an important statement about great power competition in the region, but still I think the overall effect has not been what the administration had wanted. And I think people are looking back and wondering whether the trip was really worth it. We haven’t seen much change in the policies of Saudi Arabia, or other countries in the region, to be quite honest. TREVELYAN: Well, in fact, OPEC actually just announced that they’re going to cut oil production, because it seems like they like having oil at $100 a barrel. But, Martin, if I could just turn to you and also the Saudis recently jailed a woman for her tweets for forty-five years—tweets in which she appears to have criticized the crown prince. You wrote in your paper, perhaps prophetically, “If bin Salman comes to believe he now has sufficient leverage to force the Biden administration to accept him as he is, he may have little incentive to act more responsibly.” Do you think you were right? INDYK: Regrettably, yeah. I think that beyond that statement we felt strongly that if the Biden administration did not try for this grand bargain, for this greater understanding, that the—whatever the president did would be short-lived and unsustainable. Because all of the problems have effectively been swept under the rug, instead of dealing with them. And so therefore there’s going to be a renewed deterioration, exacerbated by the sense of disappointment on the side of the United States because, as you pointed out, Laura, not only are they not increasing production, OPEC is now decreasing production. (Coughs.) Excuse me. Which is, by the way, a direct contravention of the private assurance that the crown prince gave the president that Saudi Arabia would increase production by some $200,000 a month, starting in October and going through the end of the year. And that’s critically important for the overall effort by the United States to deal with Russia, as we head into winter, as European allies critical to the support of Ukraine are facing a really tough energy situation as a result of the tactics of Vladimir Putin—cutting off the gas, driving the price of gas through the roof. It’s really unhelpful that the Saudis are not prepared to live up to the commitments that they made in private during the president’s visit. That’s one problem. Second problem is that rather than seeing the willingness of President Biden to go there and, as you pointed out, fist bump the crown prince, as an act of kind of reconciliation and willingness to put the past statements about Saudi Arabia as a pariah state behind the president, and try to build a new, positive relationship. Instead of viewing that in a way that it was intended, the Saudis, starting with the crown prince but in their press, have been lauding the fact that Biden came on his knees and MBS is back, and there’s nothing to be done about his—(inaudible). It’s just that United States has recognized the wrongness of its ways. And so I think that the basic basis has now been laid for an even more serious misunderstanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States, at a time when we really need Saudi Arabia to be harmonious with our efforts, particularly when it comes to the impact of energy on the war in Ukraine. TREVELYAN: Right. I mean, it’s, like, three-dimensional chess. There are so many things—so many strands coming together, so many moves happening at the same time. And in your paper, you talked about the relationship with Iran as being something, in a way, that the two countries could come together on, because Iran is historically an enemy of Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. is trying to contain it. But, Steven, how do you assess the state of these talks to revive the Iran nuclear deal? And what do you think the Saudis are making of that, and how that plays into, really, how little they’ve done since President Biden’s visit? COOK: Yeah, before I get into that a little bit, I just want to add a further complication to Martin’s comments. And that is, is what makes Saudi Arabia so difficult to kind of get their minds around and figure out a way forward is the—is you have this crown prince who is, as has been described, brash, impulsive, even—(laughs)—I’ve heard people call him a sociopath. Yet, he has done a number of revolutionary things within Saudi Arabia that, absent the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, absent the intervention in Yemen, absent the blockade of Qatar, absent his reluctance to help the United States now, people would be singing his praises.  This is someone who has reined in the religious police and the clerical establishment. Is really trying to force a change in the way in which Islam is practiced both in Saudi Arabia and his emissaries telling Muslims around the world that they need to obey the laws within their countries. That’s, I think, a pretty radical thing for a Saudi prince to do. Obviously, women can drive. Women are all over the place in Saudi Arabia, in comparison to twenty years ago. He’s unleashed young people to enjoy the things that they’ve come to enjoy when they go to school outside of Saudi Arabia. These things are important. And when you think about Saudi futures, there’s a piece of the MBS agenda that you can’t think of a better Saudi future. And then there’s a piece that there— TREVELYAN: So long as you don’t dare tweet about him. COOK: Precisely, precisely. And then there’s this other piece of it where it’s worse than it’s ever been. Saudi Arabia is truly a police state with an impulsive leader, which leads to a lot of danger. And I think this really complicates things. Part of that complication is the relationship—and is the—how the United States should relate to Saudi Arabia. And part of that is Iran. And the Saudis have built up a narrative over the course of two decades that suggests that the United States would like to replace Saudi Arabia with Iran as its primary interlocutor in the region. And going back to everything from the invasion of Iraq, which vassalized Iraq to Iran, to the unwillingness of the Obama administration to intervene in Syria, to the Arab uprisings which, especially when it came to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the belief that the Obama administration sort of helped show Mubarak the door, which in turn made Egypt neutral in the region, all the way including Yemen, and the Iranian attacks on Abqaiq and Khurais in the summer of 2019, in which the United States didn’t respond. Take all those things together. In isolation, the United States had good reasons for doing what it did. But taken together, the Saudis have built a narrative that the United States is not committed to Saudi security or regional stability, and is going to, through the JCPOA, leave Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states at the mercy of the Iranians. Now, they have been opposed to the original JCPOA, they’re opposed to getting back into the JCPOA. Not necessarily on the nuclear issue, on the sanctions relief piece of things. But of course, at the moment Ayatollah Khamenei is helping them out by being resistant to the United States’ efforts to get back into the agreement. TREVELYAN: And yet, Martin, I read today that U.S. military command responsible for the Middle East and Iran is developing plans to open a facility in Saudi Arabia that will be based on testing new technology to combat the threat from unmanned drones. Now, as we know, there’s been a lot happening recently, a lot of back and forth with the Iranians and their drones. So do you think, Martin, it’s possible that despite maybe the lack of progress that we see, or we think we see since President Biden’s visit, there is something going on in terms of military cooperation against Iraq, particularly when it comes to drones? INDYK: Yeah, I think that’s true. The military cooperation has continued, even in the worst days of the Obama administration’s relationship with the crown prince. The military cooperation was there over Yemen, actually, even more so than today. So the fact that there’s military cooperation doesn’t really get at all the other things that we’re discussing here. There’s a minimum level of common interest here on the security play. The Saudis have, as you alluded to, a big problem with Iranian drones. They’ve been used by the Houthis—or were up until the truce that was negotiated in Yemen—they’d been used by the Houthis to attack on a daily basis Saudi targets, including civilian targets. And of course, there was this Iranian attack that Steven referred to, which took out 50 percent of Saudi Arabia’s oil production, albeit only for a couple of days. And the United States did not have a good answer, shockingly, to the kind of techniques that have been used and the technology that was used in those attacks. So, hence, the effort to try to come up with some answers beyond the standard Patriot air defense systems that we’ve put into Saudi Arabia. And so I think on the—but I regard it as a tactical thing. On a tactical level, we have a common interest in dealing with the threat from Iran. And that manifests itself in these kinds of things. The other day, the United States, in an effort to show Iran that it had a serious military option, flew B-52s with their nuclear bombs across Europe from—across—excuse me—the Middle East from England to—essentially up to Iranian airspace. So the last phase of that trip, they were escorted by Saudi fighters. And so that’s a manifestation of the way in which the two countries still work together. And I don’t want to suggest that on the security level, on the arms sales level, there isn’t a lot of kind of continued business as usual. But there is something fundamentally wrong with the relationship that if not fixed is going to make it very difficult for us to pursue our strategic interests effectively in the region, and for Saudi Arabia to do the same. TREVELYAN: All right, now before we open up to the Q&A, I’d just like to ask both of you if you could—because we’re running out of time already, just in forty-five seconds just to sum up your hopes for the U.S.-Saudi relationship, if you can—if you can do that, and throw it forward. So, Steven, what would you like to see in this relationship? COOK: Well, there’s what I’d like to see in the relationship and what I expect to see in the relationship. What I’d like to see in the relationship is what Martin and I wrote, about a new strategic compact, which would take care of the issues that divide the two countries. What I think will happen is something else we wrote about, which is a realist rapprochement, which will essentially sweep the issues that divide us under the gain for short-term gain, or the promise of short-term gain, but those problems will come back very quickly to haunt the two governments. TREVELYAN: Martin, what do you expect to see? And do you think that the Saudis are looking ahead and perhaps even thinking President Trump could return? INDYK: For sure that’s part of their calculation. I think that they would hope for that and wish it would come about. But they can’t be sure of it. I think that given the way that the visit went, and the way things are now developing, I’m afraid that there’ll be a continued deterioration in the relationship. What I would like to see is that both sides recognize that they need to find a new way of doing business together. And that the crown prince needs to respect American interests, treat his people better, act with greater circumspection and deliberation. And in response, the United States needs to become a more reliable security partner to Saudi Arabia in a very difficult strategic environment. TREVELYAN: Diplomatically put. Martin Indyk and Steven Cook, thank you so much for that discussion. And now I’d like to open it up to the floor for questions. And I think, Christina you’re going to just explain how that works. OPERATOR: I’ve got it. (Gives queuing instructions.) Our first question comes from Sheikh Ubaid from the Muslim Peace Coalition. TREVELYAN: Thank you, Sheikh. Do go ahead. UBAID: Thank you for taking my question. In the past Soviet Union was a major nuclear threat. Therefore, we put up with these dictators in the Middle East, and they were not as tyrannical as MBS. Now that threat is gone, and China is more pragmatic and does not rattle the nuclear saber. So why do we put up with MBS and also his counterpart in this, UAE? I mean, they just do superficial reforms, just like allowing wrestling and mixing of genders while they’re putting female activists and independent Islamic scholars in jail. Because continuing to support him will further alienate the Arab and Muslim masses, and—which is not a good thing with our rivalry with China. China is persecuting Muslims, so this is an ideal opportunity for the U.S. to win back the Muslim support that it had in the ’50s and early ’60s. MBS also decided that he could support the Israeli and Indian government, as well as have friendship with China, so that he gets the support that he—they used to get from the U.S. in the past militarily and that he would be free to— to repress his people. But those factors should be in—don’t you think should be in our analysis of the situation, so that we win the Arab and Muslim street and not just rely on these dictators who can be overthrown anytime? TREVELYAN: Thank you for that question. Martin, would you like to respond? INDYK: Well, Sheikh Ubaid is right that we need to take account of the street, such as it is, in the Arab and Muslim world, and that’s a very difficult thing to do. First of all, is it really one street? Probably not. There are a lot of different streets with different attitudes across the Muslim world, and different priorities. And secondly, there’s a kind of structural problem, which I’m sure he’s aware of—(laughs)—and lives with, which is a kind of structural antagonism between the Muslim world and the United States, fundamental misunderstanding on both sides of what the other’s intentions are. And there’s so much water under the bridge in this regard that it’s very hard to find ways—effective ways of rebuilding the trust and understanding between these two very large communities. And I say this as somebody who, for many years, promoted a U.S.-Islamic world dialogue, sort—all sorts of ways, both political and economic and cultural, to try to build those bridges. And it just—not that we didn’t have some success, but it’s a very difficult thing to do. So the bottom line is that I don’t think that we can—we, the United States—can or should run its foreign policy on the basis of an applause meter in the Muslim world. I think that we need to explain ourselves better, but essentially if we don’t pursue our own interests in a wise and effective way then when—it won’t work.  Barack Obama gave a famous speech in Cairo at the beginning of his presidency in an attempt to reach out to the Muslim world. By the end of his presidency, America’s standing in the Muslim world was at an all-time low, in the single digits in terms of Muslim public opinion. So best of intentions don’t seem to do it. I really think we’re better off being clear, being honest, and promoting our interests—which include better relations with the Muslim world but cannot be defined by that objective. TREVELYAN: Martin, thank you very much. Of course, you served as the U.S. special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, amongst your many other roles. So you know of what you speak. Can we take the next question, please? OPERATOR: The next question comes from Sarah Leah Whitson, from Democracy for the Arab World Now. TREVELYAN: Thanks, Sarah. Do go ahead. WHITSON: Hi, Martin. Hi, Steven. I wanted to just push a little bit more for you to articulate the security interests or the interests of the United States that you now advocate. Trumping, I guess, other considerations, including compliance with U.S. laws on providing weapons to abusive governments, as well as overlooking or putting aside the war in Yemen, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the continued incarceration of women. Is it really just the need for Saudi Arabia to provide oil, which it’s not doing? You, Martin, have advocated for a withdrawal of the U.S.—a decrease of the U.S.’ military commitments in the United States. And I think Biden started on that path but hasn’t continued it.  So I really wonder what’s changed? Why are you now again advocating for the United States to provide security guarantees to essentially a dictatorship, and a dictatorship royal coterie in exchange for oil, which Saudi Arabia is not increasing output for? And if it’s just oil why not just lift sanctions on Iran and Venezuela and Russia, if that’s the most important consideration? TREVELYAN: Yeah. So, Steven, why should the U.S. provide security guarantees to a dictatorship, as Sarah put it? COOK: Yeah. It’s a—I think it’s a—I think it’s a good question. I think it’s something that the Biden administration has clearly wrestled with. You have to give the Biden administration some amount of credit here for its desire to be consistent with the president’s campaign rhetoric, and what it did when it came into office. I think there’s a couple of things that had made that extremely difficult. And that is the lack of anticipation of geopolitical shock and domestic political shocks, coming in the form—and resulting in the dramatic run-up in the price of gasoline for American consumers. And as principled as perhaps Joe Biden would like to have been, he’s also a politician who would like to be reelected in 2024 and would like Democrats to be reelected in 2022. That, more than anything, the price of gas impinged upon those two important goals. There is—there is political—parochial political interests that go into our national interest. And that is what essentially drove the Biden administration to dispatch a number of envoys to Riyadh, to seek the Saudi cooperation in pumping more oil, that eventually drove the president to Riyadh. He did not meet with success, of course. But the view that Saudi Arabia can be helpful is not invalid. It’s just that the crown prince doesn’t necessarily want to help, perhaps looking forward to 2024, and a return of Donald Trump and an administration with which they felt they could deal more easily with. From my own perspective, I think that the idea that we can drive politics in Saudi Arabia, or we can drive politics in any country of the region, when leaders determine that what they’re doing is in their interest or is, in fact, existential, is difficult for the United States, given the fact that we don’t have the kind of resources to alter the interests or have the kind of leverage that we might imagine that we have in order to fundamentally alter the politics of a country. It's outrageous, what MBS has done at home. The country is, in some ways, more open than it’s ever been, but MBS is ruling like a—more like his grandfather than his father or his uncle, in that he is accumulating all of the power and he is adding to that power by leveraging all kinds of modern technologies in order to create a surveillance state. I’m not convinced that there’s much that we can do about that, as long as MBS is content—intends to continue to accumulate and centralize power. I haven’t really changed my position on that, but I do think that Saudi Arabia remains important. As Martin pointed out, in the energy transition we’re going to be more reliant on Saudi oil for the time being. If we don’t want to be complicit with Saudi Arabia, then it’s incumbent upon all of us to pursue things like a more rational energy policy. It’s incumbent upon us to think about things like lifting sanctions on a country like Venezuela, something that the Biden administration has very much sought—pursued. Lifting sanctions on Iran, something that the Biden administration has also pursued, through the JCPOA. These are not ideas that are revolutionary ideas. But the problems, particularly when it comes to Iran, lies in Tehran, not necessarily in Washington. TREVELYAN: Right. And, Martin, Sarah was asking why are you proposing essentially security guarantees for a country that has trampled on human rights? INDYK: Yeah. And I think that we make very clear in the paper that all of these issues—especially human rights issues—need to be addressed if there’s to be the kind of compact that we are recommending. And not just the human rights issues. It’s the issue of Yemen, of the relationship with Israel and, of course, what to do about Iran and its threatening behavior and hegemonic ambitions in the region. So all of these issues, in our view, need to be addressed in a broader understanding of where our common interests lie and what we would like or need—not like, but need—to see from Saudi Arabia in order to justify the kind of commitment to their security that we are recommending. So far from sweeping this under the rug, that’s exactly what we’re arguing against. Is not to ignore those issues, but to deal with them openly, and reach and understanding with MBS, the crown prince, about what it is that we expect him to do and what he can expect from us if he does it. So I think that’s the key here. It’s not to ignore it, but to address it. TREVELYAN: Thanks very much. Can we have the next question, please? OPERATOR: Absolutely. Our next question comes from Jim Prince from The Democracy Council.  He writes: What is the likelihood that Saudi Arabia joins the Abraham Accords? Can you discuss the status and future of Saudi-Israeli relations? TREVELYAN: Ah, indeed. So, Martin, what do you think? What is the likelihood that Saudi Arabia joins that accord? INDYK: Well, eventually they will. But they’ll do it on their own timetable, which means not anytime soon. We see them doing things which we call small steps. Steven referred to it earlier, the overflight rights. It’s actually a very small step. They allowed the Israelis to fly to Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, Dubai after the Abraham Accords were signed, as their way of signaling that they basically support it, but they’re really not going to do much on their own.  They did do this deal in the Red Sea, where two islands that had previously been held by Egypt were handed over to Saudi Arabia by Egypt. And that required a security understanding with Israel, because under the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt those islands were in Egypt’s hands, and Egypt had to commit to freedom of navigation in the Red Sea for Israeli ships and Israeli cargos going through there. And the Saudis had to take that on. If you like, that’s a kind of security normalization that the Saudis agreed to. But it’s very low-profile and not likely to get any real attention. Saudis basically are not the same as these small countries like the UAE and Bahrain. They have a large population that’s been brought up under the anti-Israel, even antisemitic diet for decades. And they are not going to be easily turned around. And that is why the crown prince is consistent in saying that he needs to see progress on the Palestinian issue before he takes any big steps towards normalization. And because the Palestinian issue is stuck in the mud and doesn’t look like it’s going to move forward in any positive way for some time to come, I think that it’s going to take some time before we see a breakthrough between Saudi Arabia and Israel.  And this has nothing to do with a lack of desire on the part of the Biden administration to support the Abraham Accords because they were somehow a Trump administration breakthrough, and therefore Biden doesn’t want to do it. He’s worked it hard. He’s pushed hard in various directions to try to advance the Abraham Accords because it’s a good thing. And it serves the cause of peace and it serves the cause of American interests in the region to have these countries working with Israel. But Saudis are going to be, as always, the caboose on the train, not the engine. TREVELYAN: Thanks very much for that. Can we have the next question, please? OPERATOR: Our next written question comes from Sarah Robinson from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. She writes: Has Saudi Arabia signaled concern about climate changes in their region, such as intensified drought and excessive heat and/or their potential for collaboration toward alternative energy opportunities? TREVELYAN: Interesting question about an oil producer. Steven, what do you think? COOK: Well, there has been a lot of talk in the Gulf broadly, but also Saudi Arabia, about climate change. And I think that there are aspects of Crown Prince Salman’s Vision 2030 which recognizes that there’s going to become a time where oil is not going to become important, and that climate change is going to affect—climate change is going to affect the region. But like many things that have happened with Saudi Arabia, there’s lots of big talk about things and much more fanfare when it comes to certain issues, and not a lot of action. The Saudis obviously are committed to continuing to be the most important producer of oil, and a swing producer of oil in the world. And while neighbors of Saudi Arabia, Iraq—national intelligence estimate on climate that came out almost a year ago identified Iraq as one of the five most vulnerable countries to climate change. Or there are parts of the UAE that will become uninhabitable in the coming decades. The Saudis, despite talk of climate change, haven’t really signaled significant urgency to the problem. They’re much more focused on the crown prince’s flights of fancy, like, a new airline, things along those lines, than really tackling the issue of climate change. Which is affecting Saudi Arabia and the rest of the region, which is a water-scarce and very, very hot region. TREVELYAN: Thanks very much for that. And can we have the next question, please? OPERATOR: Our next question comes from David Greenhaw from Naples United Church of Christ. He asks: To what extent can Saudi Arabia play an increasing role in humanitarian relief? For instance, in Pakistan flooding? TREVELYAN: Well, I guess one would also have to ask about Yemen, and what they’re doing with the situation there, which is a humanitarian catastrophe, which is, of course, related. Martin, perhaps you could address that question. INDYK: Sure. I’ll talk about Yemen. Maybe Steve can talk more broadly about it. But in Yemen, there is a truce now. And while the Saudis have been responsible for this humanitarian disaster, they’re now getting on the right side in terms of allowing and encouraging flights to and from Sana’a to outside of the place, namely to Jordan. And, more importantly, allowing goods to flow in through the port of Hodeida, that they had essentially been blocking. And so the situation is improving on the ground, and Saudis have come to see that’s in their interests to go on the right side of this. So they are, I think, for the time being, doing the right thing. The problem there is the Houthis, on the other side, who control the northern part of Yemen and the capital, Sana’a. Really don’t have a great stake in a truce. And as a result, we’re seeing them undertake actions that are against the truce—military actions. And I fear that over time, unless the United States and the United Nations can succeed in moving the parties to a more stable ceasefire and negotiation of the political differences, it’s going to start to unravel. And then we’ll be back in the soup again and the humanitarian crisis will rear its very ugly head. So I think there’s some urgency in trying to seize the moment here, and trying to take advantage of Saudi Arabia’s understanding that it’s in its interests to try to end the war and get the hell out of Yemen, before the Houthis disrupt the whole process again. TREVELYAN: And if we leave the question of Yemen to one side for a second, Steven, if you could address the question. And he was asking if the Saudis could play a role in humanitarian relief in, for example, Pakistan, where there’s been this terrible, terrible flooding? COOK: Yeah. Look, the Saudi relationship with Pakistan is historic and deep. There’s been some problems with Pakistanis in recent years, as the Indians have made a play to become a strategic partner to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Gulf. But I think it’s clear with the kind of humanitarian needs that Pakistan has, Saudi Arabia will be providing at least monetary assistance to Pakistan. Just a quick before— I think Pakistan’s problems are well, well beyond Saudi. A third of the country remains underwater. This requires a global—a global effort. And I think, thus far, we haven’t seen much of it. But certainly, Saudi Arabia, flush with oil revenues, can be helpful there. Just one more point on Yemen. I think that the way in which Yemen has often been portrayed in the news media has been rather uncomplicated to actually quite a complicated situation. And I just want to echo what Martin said about the Houthis being the ones who are—seem intent on disrupting things. The Houthis win by not losing and by the Saudis continuing to be sucked into the conflict. Therefore, they do have a significant interest in prolonging the conflict. I think the Saudis obviously, by intervening in another country’s civil war thinking that they can prevail in a number of weeks or months, made a huge mistake. And all of the things that they feared have come true, as a result of their intervention.  But now they are seeking to get out and have been successful in helping to provide humanitarian assistance, whereas the Houthis have—as I said, don’t have a strong interest. Having met with the Houthis, these are not—these are not a nice group of people. And one can imagine them wanting to prolong this conflict to press their advantage. TREVELYAN: Thanks for that. And do we have any more questions? We have just a couple of minutes left. OPERATOR: Yes. Our next question comes from James Patton from the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy.  He writes: There has been a palpable decline in the social, political, and educational influence of the conservative ulema in the kingdom. One imagines this is causing some unseen frustration. What direction will this take, based on your observations? Is there a threat of significant backlash? TREVELYAN: Well, it’s an excellent question. I’ll ask it of both of you. Martin, would you like to go first? INDYK: I’d rather Steven went first. (Laughter.) COOK: I think what happens within the clerical establishment in Saudi Arabia is a lot like what happens with the royal family. Behind the scenes, it’s very hard to divine precisely what’s going on there. But I think that the possibility of a backlash is something that I think analysts must keep as a potential outcome, should MBS be challenged in a serious way.  One of the allies of a challenger will be the cleric—the conservative clerical establishment, which, you’ve seen, obviously gets its standing reduced dramatically over the course of MBS’s rise to power. And looking over—out over many decades in which he will likely be the king, they are faced with a diminished role. So if he gets into trouble, if there’s a significant challenge from within the royal family, one can imagine the clerical establishment—or, factions of the clerical establishment joining with opposition to MBS. TREVELYAN: Thanks for that. Yeah, go on. INDYK: I’d just make a broader point here about this delicate, high-wire act that MBS is walking. And that is that he is a modernizing reformer, dragging his country from the seventh century, sixth century, into the twenty-first century in terms of social change. It’s dramatic. It’s having a profound effect internally. The number of women, I’m told, that have now entered the workforce is 25 percent, which is a huge jump and has a profound impact on cultural and social relations in the kingdom. And so in a sense, we should all want him to succeed. And not just for the sake of the people of Saudi Arabia, but because Saudi Arabia is a leader in the Muslim world, because the king is the custodian of the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina. What happens in Saudi Arabia will have a profound ripple effect across the world—the Muslim world. And so if he succeeds in reconciling Islam with modernity, it’ll be profoundly important. And so we should want him to succeed, because the consequences of failure are really—could be quite profound. But on the other hand, that cannot be used as an excuse to give him a pass on the other things that he does that are egregious. And we’ve discussed them all. So there’s a tension there. And it’s very hard to navigate. But if there’s any one point that I’d like to make, we tried to make it in our paper, is that just by kind of whistling past the graveyard, by ignoring all those things, sweeping them under the rug, is not going to help him, Saudi Arabia, or the United States, or the Muslim world. And we need to have a mature and sensitive conversation that leads to a serious understanding about the way in which the crown prince moves his nation forward, so that all of mankind can benefit. TREVELYAN: Well, I think that seems a very fitting point to leave our discussion. Martin and Steven, thank you so much for your contribution. Thanks to all the questioners. The dilemma there for the Biden administration, how do they deal with someone who Martin described as modernizing and reforming and moving his country forward, yet also someone who jails his opponents, most recently a woman deemed an opponent simply because she tweeted to her followers things that could possibly be construed as being critical of MBS, or so it appears. So thank you to all of you for joining, and I’ll hand it over to Irina to say goodbye. FASKIANOS: Thank you so much, Laura, for moderating this discussion, and to all of you. We encourage you to follow Steven Cook’s work on Twitter at @stevenacook. And Martin Indyk’s work at @martin_indyk. You can also follow Laura Trevelyan at @lauratrevelyan. And please follow CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy Program on Twitter at @cfr_religion. We will be sending you all a link to the video and transcript. And please do read the Council’s special report that Dr. Cook and Ambassador Indyk authored. We included that in the Zoom access information, and we’ll include it again in the follow-up note. So thank you all again for this terrific discussion. And we wish you a very good rest of the day. INDYK: Thank you. TREVELYAN: Thanks very much. Bye. FASKIANOS: Bye-bye (END)  

Rev. Ciera Bates Chamberlain, executive director of Live Free Chicago-Live Free Illinois, and Ali H. Mokdad, chief strategy officer of population health at the University of Washington, discuss gun violence in the United States and around the world, and how religion leaders are responding. Tali Woodward, editor in chief of the Trace, moderated. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program.   FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Social Justice and Foreign Policy Webinar Series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today’s webinar is on the record and it will be posted on our website, CFR’s website, CFR.org, and on our iTunes podcast channel, Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. I’m delighted to introduce our distinguished panel and moderator. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain is the executive director of Live Free Chicago-Live Free Illinois, where she works with Black churches to create safe, economically viable, and self-sustained Black communities. Prior to this role, she served as the senior organizer at a faith-based organization. Reverend Bates-Chamberlain is an adjunct professor at Northeastern University, a mental health professional, and strategy consultant. She was ordained a minister through the Church of Jesus Christ House of Prayer, where she served as a church administrator for the Chicago congregation. Ali Mokdad is a professor of health metric sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and chief strategy officer for population health at the University of Washington. Prior to these roles, he worked at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Mokdad has published groundbreaking research on local level disease trends and leading risk factors for poor health. Dr. Mokdad has been cited in publications addressing gun violence around the world. Tali Woodward will be moderating today’s conversation. She is the editor in chief of the Trace, which is the only newsroom dedicated to covering gun violence. We started late because we’re having a few technical issues. Tali is on the phone. You cannot see her, obviously. But we wanted to keep her in this conversation so she could have the conversation with our distinguished panelists, Dr. Mokdad and Reverend Bates-Chamberlain. So we’ll do that for about twenty minutes—twenty-five minutes. And then we will turn to all of you for your questions. When we get to that point, you can click on the raise hand icon on your screen to say you want to ask a question. Please accept the unmute prompt, state your name and affiliation, followed by your question. You can also write your question in the Q&A feature in your Zoom window. But if you do that, please identify yourself so we can read that out loud. And it gives all of us context for who you are and your perspective. So with that, I’m going to turn the conversation now to Tali Woodward. We look forward to this conversation. So, Tali, over to you. WOODWARD: Hi. Thank you. And I’m sorry I can’t be on the video. There’s an internet outage where I live. So I just wanted to sort of say, again, I’m editor in chief at the Trace, which is a nonprofit newsroom that covers gun violence specifically. We have a staff of about fifteen people, and we report on all aspects of gun violence, including investigations into the National Rifle Association, and local coverage in several places in the country, including Chicago. So, Reverend Bates-Chamberlain, I wanted to sort of start with you and ask a question which I think is very kind of central to understanding gun violence in America. There’s so much attention on mass shootings and these kind of dramatic mass shootings in public places. But actually, statistically, most gun violence in America is not connected to any sort of mass shooting in a public place and is, instead, experienced in certain communities where it’s highly concentrated. And you obviously live in one of them in Chicago, I think the place that’s probably most associated with gun violence in the United States—though that’s not actually accurate, statistically. There are other places that have a much higher per capita incidence of gun violence. But I would love for you to kind of start us off telling us a little bit about what—how the epidemic of gun violence in America is really experienced in a community, from what you’ve seen. BATES-CHAMBERLAIN: Sure. Thank you, again, for having me. It’s an honor to have the opportunity to have this conversation with you all today. And so, like you stated, I work in Illinois. I’m also a part of Live Free USA, who does this work nationally. But just sort of laying it out, oftentimes Chicago receives a lot of the attention as far as gun violence in Black and brown communities, but across the state of Illinois where there are low-income Black and brown communities there’s high concentration of violence. And like you were saying, there are other cities, such as East St. Louis, who actually has higher rates of violence in those smaller cities. But again, because they don’t have the volumes they don’t receive the same attention as Chicago. But communities, specifically—I’m going to speak specifically to the Black community, because that’s a community I’m in proximity to. As folks are experiencing racism and poverty, gun violence is a symptom of—of a lack of resources and neglect to those communities and to our communities. So as we’re experiencing the other—the other issues of poverty and racism, gun violence is a product of the lack of resources and, quite frankly, just the care that our communities need. WOODWARD: I think that’s really important context to add to this and framing, to think of gun violence as a symptom of a lot of other issues and problems we have in the United States. Can you say anything more sort of about how—what you’ve—it’s a symptom of racism and poverty, and then how do you see it sort of playing out when there is a shooting in your community? BATES-CHAMBERLAIN: Sadly, a lot of people have become desensitized to it. But then there are a lot of people in community who are trying to break the culture of normalizing violence. I think it’s a sad thing when you hear—even my six-year-old son can distinguish gunshots between firecrackers. So now when we—and it’s a web of trauma. And there’s a culture that has been created in our communities of when someone is shot and killed there may be a prayer vigil, but as soon as you’re dealing with one family there’s another family on the next block who has experienced this tragedy. So at this point, it has become an overwhelming issue because there are so many homicides. We’re not even thinking about the shootings. There’s one person, Sean Malinowski, who would say the shootings are incomplete homicides. So a lot of times we’re talking about the shootings—the homicides, but we’re not even thinking about the number of shootings and the trauma that that creates. So where people are not able to send their kids to the park, grandmothers are not able to sit on their front porch because of the number of shootings. Then children are not able to receive the adequate care that they need to even address the trauma that they’re experiencing because they lost, already in high school, maybe a dozen friends to violence already. So violence and the trauma is now all around us. And like I said, many of our communities have become desensitized to it because we’ve normalized the violence in our communities. It has impacted—it has an impact, from babies to the elders. WOODWARD: Mmm hmm. Yeah, I think that’s right. And I think there’s a lot of research that shows that and the effect it can have on children, these experiences in school and on community ties, and all kinds of things. So I feel like that’s a good opportunity to ask Dr. Mokdad if you can speak a little bit to sort of what is now understood about how gun violence occurs, and sort of thinking about it as a public health problem, which I think for some people is maybe a new concept to think of. I mean, I think people think about—I know you’ve worked—done some work on obesity, and people think of that as a public health issue. I think people obviously think of smoking as a public health issue. But I think it sometimes takes a little bit of a, like, change in frame to think of gun violence that way. Could you tell us sort of how you—how you think about that, and how someone new might want to think about it? MOKDAD: Good morning and thank you for inviting me. And I totally agree with my colleague. So let me frame it a little bit before I dive into why it is a public health issue. But let me frame gun violence in the United States, and how it compares to other countries. It’s very important for us to discuss this first. We do something at where I am, at the Institute, we do something called the “global burden of disease for every country in the world,” and for many countries at the sub-national level. In the U.S. we do it at the state level and the country level. And for many countries we can do it at the state—equivalent of a state. And then we monitor what kills, so what’s killing, injuries, of course, and then risk factors, but also what’s ailing the population. And here in the United States, when we talk about gun violence we count the number of people who have been killed by gun violence or people who committed suicide by a gun, but we don’t talk about what my colleague was talking about, is what’s the disability? What’s the impact? How is this ailing our society? So when you look at the United States, we have the highest gun violence compared to any rich country in the world. So even the top rich country in the world, sixty-four countries in the world, we still are way ahead of them. Very few countries in the world, they happen to be in South America, unfortunately, have higher gun violence than we do have in the United States. And I totally agree with my colleague. We in the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, we do something called the Social Demographic Index, which is an index of education, income, and fertility under the age of twenty-five. So basically what she was talking about, what access the community has to better education and their health. And then we see a strong association between health performance and this Social Demographic Index. We call it here social determinants of health in the United States. But why is gun violence in the U.S. a major health problem right now? It’s inflicting, of course, a lot of deaths, especially among young people, here. But also it’s causing a lot of disability in the United States, pressure on our medical centers. People who have been shot or have been exposed to a violent act, they will remember it for a long time. There is a mental health impact on this. And by the way, mental health in the United States, if you look at the highest state in the U.S. with gun violence, they don’t have the highest mental health levels in the U.S. So it’s the reverse. Gun violence will cause mental health [issues], but rarely mental health causes gun violence. So gun violence is something else that we need to address. It’s basically at the root of the social determinants of health in our community, and what resources are available to our communities. WOODWARD: Thank you. That’s really helpful and helpful to get that sort of—the grand scheme of things. And I think it’s interesting that you pointed to something that we try to pay attention to at the Trace, which is that there are more people who are shot and survived than who are shot and die in the United States. Which means we have just this huge population of people who have had that experience in their lives, and whether that means they’re dealing with some sort of disability, or it is only the mental health impacts that they’re struggling with, or both. But it’s a big part—a big portion of our country at this point. Can you give the—sort of the public health framework, can you say a little bit more about what it means to look at an issue like gun violence, that is, I think we could safely say, it’s multi-sectoral in terms of causes, and try to think about health interventions that would make a difference? MOKDAD: Of course. I’m happy to. And here in the United States, by the way, gun violence especially—and we’ve published—I mean, this was published in an article—a scientific, peer-reviewed article. Gun violence here, or violence—police killing by guns here in the United States is underreported. So in a way, I’m not talking about gun violence—we’re not talking about police killing here. But again, I want you to keep in mind that gun violence sometimes is underreported here in the United States. So the problem that we are talking about, even when it comes from the police, is underreported. So keep that in mind. Now, when it comes to how we could address this problem here in the U.S. and the violence in the United States, let me start at the root cause. We have a lot of disparities—health disparities in the United States. And these health disparities, including gun violence, have four main causes that we look at. And briefly allow me to explain that. The first one is socioeconomic factors. So people who are poor, people who are less educated. Let me give you an example. A woman who is educated, for example, is more likely to understand the sign of danger—health sign of danger, more likely to seek medical care, more likely to adhere to the medical message because she understands it. So socioeconomic factors are big factors in any health problem, including gun violence. The second one, of course, here in the United States is our health insurance and underinsurance. And many Americans here, unfortunately, struggle from day to day to get the basic medical care. And we are the only rich country in the world that doesn’t have universal health care. Even somebody like me, who is a professor in the medical school, I have to be careful, and I have to make sure I have the medical insurance, and I have to make sure I know how to navigate the system. The third one is access—quality of medical care. Here in the United States, not everybody has access to good quality medical care. And I mean not medical errors. I’m deviating a little bit about gun violence, but I want to explain disparity because it encompasses gun violence. It’s how late is a person coming to seek medical care? And once that person is in the medical care, how well he or she has been followed to make sure the medication or what they have received is doing exactly what—effective coverage. So if you have high blood pressure, if you have medication it’s going to reduce your blood pressure. The last one are risk factors such as obesity and diabetes. So you come to gun violence, it’s mainly the first one. But the others are impacting, because people in the United States are struggling from day to day. And unfortunately, there is access to guns here in the U.S. One way to control it is, of course, control access to guns. Other countries have controlled alcohol, and successfully, outlets for alcohol. Making sure that alcohol bars cannot be next to each other, stop selling alcohol at a certain point of time. If you look, for example, the mayor of Cali in Colombia. He had the highest gun violence. He was a medical doctor. He controlled alcohol, and he’s seen a sharp decline in gun violence in his city. So there are ways that other countries have applied. But in the United States, we run away from the main problem that we face—whether it is gun violence, whether it’s this disparity of our health—socioeconomic factors. We do not take care of our own population, and it takes a village, and we all—we cannot be safe until all of us are safe. We cannot be healthy until all of us are healthy. We cannot treat somebody different than another one. And until we address these issues this gun violence will then be here look at you. Over. WOODWARD: So I understand what you’re saying, and it’s all very compelling. And I agree that all of the evidence shows that these things are interrelated. What would you say to someone who says: Well, that’s a huge list of things to address, and we’re never going to do that in the United States, for all kinds of political reasons? So how do we just—how do we effect gun violence? MOKDAD: (Laughs.) Let me tell you my answer for that. We do something at the Institute called human capital. When you look at every country in the world—what we mean by human capital is ages twenty to sixty-four, this is your working force. How healthy and how educated they are? And this Human Capital Index is strongly associated with economic development. Look at South Korea, for example. I mean, they have invested in education and health by addressing these factors, socioeconomic status. Automatically look at their economy and how well they are doing. All countries—Singapore—all countries who invested in health and education and addressed disparities on the issues I’m talking about, they made more money, they were a rich country, and they made progress. So my answer to somebody who’s telling me like this, all our problems in the U.S. when it comes to health, we spent in the United States $3.7 trillion on health. The whole world—the whole world spends eight trillion dollars. So we spent almost half of what the world is spending. And look where we are. Look at our outcomes. Any metric you look at—life expectancy, we’re forty-two in the world. Maternity mortality is higher than Lebanon when I was born. Lebanon is a country that has a civil war—came out of civil war. Maternal mortality in Lebanon is lower than maternal mortality in the United States. So how do we address all these issues? We have to start—and we have to stop ignoring these issues. We have to take care of our own and have a social network to take care of our own people. Otherwise, you and I will be talking about this, my daughter and your daughter will be talking about this in twenty, thirty years, exactly the same. We have to act now. It’s time to act. We have the tools to address it. But we tend, unfortunately, in the United States to ignore it. And we don’t want to do that. It’s not expensive. I mean, listen— WOODWARD: If you look at all of the other side of it, yeah. MOKDAD: Yeah. I went to school. I paid for my education because it’s a good investment. I mean, it’s not wasted money. It’s a very good investment. It makes our country strong. It makes our economy better. We still compete everybody in the world. So, yes, we would pay money. You have to pay money to make money. WOODWARD: Thank you. Reverend Bates-Chamberlain, do you have anything that you want to add at this point? Connecting the two kind of aspects we’ve been talking about? The sort of community experience on the community level with public health approaches? BATES-CHAMBERLAIN: Yes. I actually—Dr. Ali provoked thought around a few things I would like to bring up. One, I want to bring up the conversations of mass shootings, and that was sort of in your first question. And how oftentimes—so, for example, in Illinois we had the Highland Park shooting, which was devastating. But the—as we were holding space for that, we were also holding space by realizing that mass shootings that happen in white communities see a lot of resources and support. In Black communities you see mass shootings every week, but there was no state of emergency declared till there was the Highland Park shooting. So I think even the way as we’re thinking about this how we’re able to acknowledge the disparities even in our responses. I think the second piece I wanted to name, in continuing on the responses on how we feel in community when we talk about violence, when we talk about not having the violent means. And what typically happens is young Black men and women are oftentimes criminalized and not supported. But when there are shootings in other areas, it becomes a mental health conversation. And this isn’t only around gun violence. We’ve seen this between the opioid and the crack epidemic. So even how we’re—again, how we’re thinking about supporting communities so that we can end the violence. And then the other piece of just adding to how we can impact gun violence so it begins to really work toward reducing it, because there are so many things that contribute to violence in our communities. But it really is—I heard a Ted Talk. And I forgot the speaker’s name, but she said something that stuck with me, basically saying that if my brain experienced what your brain experienced, I would act in the same ways that you act. And that stuck out to me because what our people are experiencing, meaning when people have seen their parents incarcerated, or they’re hungry because we don’t have access—well, we have food deserts, when we don’t have access to mental health facilities. And then when we do have some—when we’re connected to a mental health agency, you got to go through all type of loopholes even just to get services. So access to things that people need just to survive when those things are taken away, this is the response that you typically get. But there are remedies for it. So even just being able to say that we’re going to make sure that communities receive services in resources and that they’re equitably distributed and allocated in communities, ensuring that governments aren’t coordinating these strategies. So the governments need to have things in place, such as offices of gun violence prevention, where they’re pulling all of the resources and the stakeholders together and they’re coordinating public health strategies. And then where we’re also making sure that there are good policies that’s put in place that speak to the surviving community, as well as the inner city. MOKDAD: May I add something to what the reverend just said? I totally agree with her, but I want to give you a very specific example to make her point. Look at COVID-19. We have a pandemic in the United States. Mortality among African American, Hispanics, and Native American was much higher than white. We looked at it, and it’s among the younger age group. It’s not among the elderly. Among the younger age group in Hispanic, younger age group in African American. We failed in the U.S. to protect our essential workers. I mean, these people went out, kept food on our table, kept our country running while the rich people—I mean, look at us. We’re on Zoom, we can do all our work—I can work from home. These guys couldn’t work from home because their jobs required them to be out and about. We failed to protect them. And we knew all along that we needed to protect them. Give them a mask, give them a suit, let them wear what they need to do, gear to protect themselves. We failed. Only we started talking about it in the U.S.—we know from scientific—from public health, we knew that is going to happen. We only started talking about when all over the media was, like, a meat packing—pork meat packing somewhere in the Midwest shutting down because there was a lot of infections. And people were afraid, oh my God, I’m not going to have my steak right now. This is exactly what we are talking about. WOODWARD: Well, thank you very much. Do we want to—I think we’re supposed to open it up to questions at this point. Irina, are you taking over, or someone else? BATES-CHAMBERLAIN: Can I make one more comment, just to follow Dr. Ali? WOODWARD: Sure. BATES-CHAMBERLAIN: Because when we think about the COVID-19 response, and knowing the—in Chicago the Black community was hit hardest by COVID-19, because of many of the reasons why he named. But when we look at the investment in COVID response, everybody had a role and there was a significant investment. And that needs to happen with violence prevention. There needs to be—the city needs to coordinate their response with all of the stakeholders. There needs to be a narrative change where people are educated on the issue. When we did COVID-19, a five-year-old knew how they can help to reduce the curve because they could wash their hands. And other people had a role. So we all realized that it took everyone. Everyone is impacted by COVID-19, and everybody had a role in reducing it. And that is exactly what we need to do with gun violence. WOODWARD: Very good point. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Tali, this is Irina. We are going to go to questions now. WOODWARD: OK, great. Thank you. OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.) Our first question comes from Barbara McBee from Soka Gakkai International-USA. She writes: Regardless of access, Black people are overwhelmingly killed by police. Mass shooters seem to be overwhelmingly white. How do we change this or engage in the conversation to make things—to make changes in fundamental attitudes? BATES-CHAMBERLAIN: So I can go. So just naming that police violence is gun violence. I think we need to always mention that we’re naming that. But it goes back to narrative change, what I named earlier. There’s this—and if I can hear the question correctly—yes, oftentimes we do see, like, the mass shooters often are not only White, they’re White men that are oftentimes the mass shooters. But in community there’s a different narrative that is put out. And we have to address the narrative and the need. And it goes back to criminalizing Black communities. And so people have to be—and this is where even the faith community can step in. This is about being in relationship. This is about making sure that we’re teaching people in community around these false narratives and how they’re portrayed, and even teaching folks around—if there’s a lack of understanding around police violence and the statistics. We all have a role in being sure that we’re educating people in our congregations, in our various social circles, so that people—so that we can collectively begin to change that narrative. MOKDAD: I mean, I totally agree. But racism is a public health issue. We do, in this country we measure racism. Right now we say African Americans are more likely to be killed than white or et cetera. Until we measure—we know, for example, cigarette smoking will increase your lung cancer risk. And we have a number, a relative risk for that. We need to measure racism in this country. And we need to do a better job of saying what racism is causing in this country. It’s the root cause of a lot of problems in the U.S. And until we address it and we speak about it, and being quiet right now is not acceptable. FASKIANOS: Great. Next question. OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Reverend Curtiss DeYoung from the Minnesota Council on Churches. He writes specifically to Reverend Bates-Chamberlain, and asks: Can you speak to how state-sponsored police violence against Black people intersects with gun violence in Black communities? I know you have addressed both concerns. BATES-CHAMBERLAIN: Yes. Thank you, Dr. DeYoung. So, yeah, I think when we’re specifically talking about—and a lot of our work—I would like to name that a lot of our work is at the intersection of public safety and criminal justice reform, because you can’t reduce gun violence without addressing police violence, mass incarceration. All of those three work together. But specifically at the intersection of state-sanctioned violence, what seems to happen is—because when we’re talking about violence prevention, we also have to begin to bring in the conversations clearance rates. So if you’re in community, and although a public health approach means that we don’t have a carceral or law enforcement-centered approach, but we know that law enforcement—that they’re in the equation. But when you have police continuing to abuse and terrorize Black communities, that breaks down the ability, one, for communities to feel protected and served. That also breaks down the barriers of people actually using the justice system as a—as a means towards justice. So oftentimes people will take justice in their own hands because there is no entity that they can go to that is trusted to help to bring justice to their loved ones. So they almost in some ways can say that there is an increase because there is a lack of police legitimacy and trust. FASKIANOS: Great. Next question. OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Homi Gandhi from the Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America. He writes: In the USA, there’s a constitutional right to bear arms. Where is the right for people who do not want to own arms, but want to live in peace? FASKIANOS: I don’t know who wants to take that. Ciera. BATES-CHAMBERLAIN: Where—let me reframe—you said, where is the constitutional right for those who don’t want to bear arms and who want to live in peace? OPERATOR: Correct. BATES-CHAMBERLAIN: Uh-huh. So I’m with you. I am not an advocate of—there are so many guns in our communities. I feel like the Constitution in itself was written by racist white men, who were slave owners. And so that we need to completely rethink the Constitution in many ways. And I said it that bluntly because, I mean, we’re dealing with so much in our country. I mean, we just had Roe v. Wade overturned. There are so many things that rebuilding it—so, and it even comes down to the right to bear arms. I feel like I have a right to live, and my children have a right to live. So that is something that I can’t explain outside of—I completely agree with you. And I do not believe that assault rifles in our—people being able to legally buy assault rifles when you can’t even use an assault rifle to go hunting, it makes no sense. So there is—there is a wickedness that exists in this country when the right to bear arms is more important than one’s right to live. MOKDAD: We call it in public health competing morbidity. And let me explain it. So say you have obesity as a problem. And it’s causing blood pressure. And you say, I don’t address obesity. I’m going to find a pill for blood pressure and give people a pill for blood pressure. We will lower blood pressure in the community. Diabetes will go on. Another morbidity will go on, because obesity is causing another morbidity. You come and find a pill for diabetes and cure diabetes, then heart diseases will come up. So it comes down to basically you have to address the root cause. There is a root cause here that you have to address it. And I agree with you. We have the right to live in peace. We have the right to have access to medical care. We have a right to feel equal to anybody else in my society. I have the right to, when I go to a medical center I’m treated exactly the same, irrespective of how I look, whether I have an accent or not, tall, short, ugly, beautiful, whatever. In my case, it’s ugly. So that’s what we need to do in the United States. Unless we address the root causes of the problem, the social justice and social determinants of health, we’re going to have millions of problems, not only gun violence. And by addressing these root causes, we’re going to make our country much better. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next question. OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Steven Denker from Temple Kol Ami. He asks: Can our speakers address the second half of our webinar’s title, “and Abroad”? Gun Violence at Home and Abroad. MOKDAD: So gun violence abroad, I said in South America and El Salvador—for example, El Salvador, is much higher than what’s here in the United States. And the reason we believe, from our data, is drug trafficking parts of it. But also in many countries in South American where gun violence is higher, parts of Mexico as well, is exactly the same issues that we are talking about, the social justice and social determinants of health, where people don’t have access to a lot of resources that they need, the basic needs that are a human right. Now, let’s look at our peers in the world, countries that are exactly the same. The big news lately was the assassination of the ex-prime minister in Japan. And the guy who used a gun, a homemade gun. Couldn’t—you can’t buy a gun. In Japan, for example, to get a gun it’s very difficult, and to own a gun is very difficult. But you look at the culture in Japan, where the system provides everything to the country. You look at Europe, for example. Take Germany, France. Germany, for example, college education is free, healthcare is free. People like you and I don’t worry about our retirement, will we have enough to pay for our medical bill? Don’t worry about a fund to educate our children. Everything has been provided. People are happier. They’re more productive. So when you look at what’s happening globally, there are experiments that are going on at the global level. And in the United States, we tend to ignore what’s happening around us. And when we look at our peers and we see what they have done to control gun violence—look, for example, in Australia. You could—you want to own a gun in Australia? It’s a large country. You want to use it for hunting. By all means, they’ll allow you. But they’re very strict. You have to have a safe to have it. The bullets have to be stored somewhere else. And they do routine checkup. They knock on—they have the right to knock on your door and say: I want to check to see how you are keeping your gun? This is your license. We want to check on that. So if people in the United States want to bear arms, fine. But let’s make sure that we do it right. We make sure that people who have access to guns have been run through screening, they store it correctly. And, yes, if they use it incorrectly, there is a penalty. And guns should be taken away from a lot of people if this happens. So unfortunately, we don’t do what other countries have done in the United States in order to prevent that epidemic. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next question. OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Myles Caggins III from the Council on Foreign Relations. He asks: Perhaps my view is contrarian. As unacceptable as police shootings are, they are not in the top fifty causes of death for Black people. Can faith communities have a stronger role in teaching interpersonal skills and conflict resolution for young people, following the New Testament and the Qur’an guidance about peace and love? BATES-CHAMBERLAIN: I would say that, yes, congregations can definitely teach restorative justice practices. But I would think that it’s sort of easy for us to fall into—as faith leaders—to fall into this very comfortable space of sticking with, “let’s change you.” And although, yes, gun violence is the number-one killer of Black men, I think what myself and Dr. Ali have continued to push that this is systemic. So we can continue to slap Band-Aid issues on this situation, but until we get to the root of it—it’s almost like the story of the river babies. We have to make sure that we’re going up the river and finding out why this is happening. And we’ve already found out why this is happening. It's happening because of the lack of resources, because of racism, because of poverty. So as faith leaders, it is our job to hold both. We have to address the systems. We have to hold elected officials accountable. We have to make sure that people in communities have what they need in order to survive. And then we can also have those conversations on how to have better interpersonal skills and how to integrate RJ principles into their daily lives. MOKDAD: Even—I mean, even if it’s not the leading cause of death—let’s say the leading cause of death is heart disease or cardiovascular diseases. The root cause is cardiovascular disease and heart diseases are basically what we’re talking about. Access to medical care. We tell people to prevent obesity and prevent diabetes, it’s fresh fruits and vegetables. With food desert in Chicago, I mean, I did some big project in Chicago for food deserts. How could you access fresh fruits and vegetables? Like, can you afford it? I mean, a woman at the end of the day at 7:00 feeding her children, the store at the corner has junk food that she can feed her children and we move on. She worked all day. She doesn’t have a car to go to a fresh market to get—to a market to get fresh fruits and vegetables. All of these issues that we are talking about not only improve and reduce gun violence in the United States, but cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, you name it, cancer in the United States. These issues are causing a lot of problem in the U.S., and we need to address them. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Before we take the next question, I just wanted to throw back to Tali to ask if you had any additional questions or if you had some stats that you might want to add to the conversation, given your reporting on this issue? WOODWARD: Well, I mean, so the only thing I would add is really sort of, like, a little bit more detail about the distinctions between sort of race or gun violence in the United States and other parts of the world. And one thing that we haven’t mentioned specifically today is gun suicide, which is the cause of more than half of the gun deaths in America and an area in which the U.S. really stands as an outlier. So I just think that that’s important. The U.S. has, I think, about 4 percent of the global population, but at third of the globe’s firearm suicides. So really a huge distinction there. And I think that that’s also just worth mentioning, because—particularly because we’ve done some reporting over the past year about how youth suicide is on the rise in America, and particularly Black and brown youth suicide. So I think it’s just an element of the landscape to be aware of. But I’ve definitely learned a lot today, and really enjoyed doing this, and thanks for giving me the opportunity. FASKIANOS: Tali, just one question to follow up before we take the next question. Has that—has the rate of suicide gone up since the pandemic? Or is it the same? WOODWARD: Yes, and specifically the—suicides have increased, I think, very slightly. But the percentage that are committed with a firearm has increased more significantly since the pandemic began. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. All right, we’ll take the next question. OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Rabbi Nadya Gross of Yerusha. She writes: Many listeners today, like myself, are spiritual leaders and congregational leaders and teachers who are confronted daily with immense unmet needs, wounds, and hopelessness. It’s all we can do to keep our heads above waters of despair. What can our presenters offer as necessary first steps to addressing the root causes of gun violence? BATES-CHAMBERLAIN: So before I answer that, I just want to read this quick quote. Archbishop Dom Hélder Câmara. Pretty sure you all are familiar with him when he says, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. But when I ask the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.” And so as we begin to think about addressing the root causes of this, first, I would say there is a community—a faith-based community organizing group. I would connect with them and find out what they’re doing around gun violence. I would also connect with the street outreach agencies in your community to learn how you can support the on-the-groundwork, as well as support a lot of the policy work. There’s so much—because this issue is really growing and it’s urgent—there’s so much work that’s happening across the country right now where you can connect to it. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can engage with organizations like mine, Live Free Illinois or Live Free USA, and find out how you can engage on both sides of the fight. Meaning, on one end we do need congregations or places of worship leading night walks. But then we also need faith leaders leading meetings with their elected officials and holding them accountable around resources and moving from carceral and law enforcement approaches and moving more into public safety approach—public health approaches. So I would say again, get connected to the organizations on the ground that are doing the work, because we need your help. MOKDAD: And I will—I totally agree. And of course, the government—I’m not talking about the government. Support groups like this one working on such things and make sure that we pass success stories along. And make sure that we don’t repeat mistake. If we tried something and it didn’t work, let’s not repeat it somewhere else. So have a network that we can share this—what’s working, what’s not. But again, I go back to the main root cause here. I would love for us in the United States to have free college, free health care. That will take a lot of pressure from many people in this country and will help with a lot of problems, including gun violence. Just look at what the Europeans are doing. Look what Australia is doing. Look what Canada is doing. Look at everywhere else. We need to follow what people are doing. Your health care should be provided for free. You shouldn’t struggle, or get broke, and then find—lose your home because you had an illness. And of course, you shouldn’t be struggling in order to get your kids in college and give them a better future. Once everybody in this country see a better future and know they can get there, many of the problems that we are talking about will disappear. BATES-CHAMBERLAIN: And if I can just add one more thing: If we think about, like, even the community—the beloved community that we’re working toward building, I hear so many times, whether they are fourteen-, fifteen-, or sixteen-year-olds who are sometimes the ones who are the perpetrators of gun violence. These are babies. I have a fourteen-year-old, I have a twelve-year-old, a six-year-old. So I can’t imagine my kid being engaged in these type of activities. However, it is happening. So when we see—when we know that there are currently eight-year-olds who in maybe five to six years are going to be engaged in some of these activities, like, we need to be advocating for our kids now. Because oftentimes there are risk factors, there are things that we see right now in third grade classrooms, and fourth grade classrooms. So we can predict how many kids are going to be in prison from a third grade classroom. Then we need to be thinking about how can we support our kids now? And when elected officials come to your pulpit or when they come to your places of worship, we need to make sure that we’re holding them accountable to those type of ideas and not allowing them to put fear into our people to be afraid of our kids. So even in that, like, holding elected officials accountable to narratives, and really holding them to making sure that they’re investing in our kids and not criminalizing our youth. FASKIANOS: Great. Do we have one last question? OPERATOR: Our final question comes from Eliana Genatt from the Council on Foreign Relations. What do each of you think about the recently passed Safer Communities Act? What aspects of the act will you expect will best reduce gun violence, if you believe any will? Additionally, rules regarding background checks are notably left out of the legislation. What will it take to enact stricter background checks for gun purchases? FASKIANOS: Who would like to go first? And if you want to make any closing remarks, because we’re nearing the end of our time, that would be great too. BATES-CHAMBERLAIN: So I think the piece that—and a lot of my comrades fought for this—was the $250 million mental health funding. Although there were some other laws around boyfriend loopholes, enhancing background checks. And there were some other laws that would address gun trafficking that was included into that legislation. But again, I think the most important piece was the investment in mental health, because that money will be able to be used by those who are lifting up CBI strategies, community violence intervention strategies. And so I think that is the—something that we’re excited about, because we understand that gun policy is important. But like we’ve been naming, it is so important that people are receiving the resources and help to actually intervene in the violence, and receive some of the trauma and mental health support that’s needed for people to either begin to heal from being survivors or victims of gun violence. And also service those individuals who may need the mental health support so that they can get out of the lifestyle that’s perpetrating gun violence. And I would say that my closing remarks—and I’m going to speak specifically to the faith community—and encourage us, Micah 6:8, that walk humbly before God, that we love mercy, that we love charity, that we do justice. And even in the space of gun violence that, again, oftentimes we are warning to things that are mercy and charity and ways that we can do book bag giveaways, or even the ways that we can hold prayer vigils. But it is so important that we be reminded to actually do justice, because that is going to be the thing that is going to end violence and address the root causes of violence in our neighborhoods. MOKDAD: It is a step in the right direction. I’m happy to see it. But certain issues that in the United States unfortunately, even when we have good intentions to do, we don’t provide the right support in order to get it done. So let’s talk about it. For example, in it is domestic violence. If you look at rich people here in the United States when they have a problem, husband and wife, lawyers will settle it. When poor people have a problem, they call the police. And the police is not trying to deal with these issues. A social worker should come. So many times here in the United States many of the solutions that we say you should do it, we don’t think about, OK, who’s going to do it? Is he or she trained to do it? Is that agency trained to do that and deal with that? So it’s a good start and I’m happy to see it. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Well, thank you to all of you for today’s stimulating conversation. We really appreciate it. We encourage you to follow Reverend Ciera Bates-Chamberlain on Twitter at @revciera, and Dr. Mokdad’s work at @AliHMokdad. And you can also follow Ms. Woodward at @taliwoodward. Again, I apologize for the technical difficulties, but thank you, Tali, for your stimulating questions and to all of you for your questions and comments. We encourage you to follow CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy Program on Twitter at @cfr_religion for announcements about upcoming events and information about the latest CFR resources. And of course, please do email us. Send an email to [email protected] with any suggestions or questions. Thank you all, again. We look forward to continuing our conversation in this webinar series in the coming weeks. So thank you all.

The 2022 Religion and Foreign Policy Workshop is part of the CFR Religion and Foreign Policy program. The goal of the workshop is to advance understanding of the forces shaping international relations and provide members of the religion community with a forum to discuss issues with colleagues and experts in order to better inform their networks. Held on an annual basis since 2007, this event brings together clergy, seminary heads, scholars of religion, and representatives of faith-based organizations from across the country for discussions on global concerns with policymakers, CFR fellows, and other experts.  The full agenda is available here. This workshop was made possible in part through the generosity of the Ford Foundation.

A democracy has never succeeded in being both diverse and equal. Yet, treating members of many different ethnic or religious groups fairly is central to the democratic project in countries around the world. It is, Yascha Mounk argues, the greatest experiment of our time. In The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, Mounk examines how diverse societies have long suffered from the ills of domination, fragmentation, or structured anarchy and shows that the past can offer crucial insights for how to do better in the future. The CFR Fellows’ Book Launch series highlights new books by CFR fellows. This meeting is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.