Professor Bennoune Interviewed by Sacramento Bee

Professor Karima Bennoune was interviewed by the Sacramento Bee for an article that covered both  her own academic research documenting resistance by people of Muslim heritage to fundamentalist extremism and her work as United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights.  The article, presented in question-and-answer format, includes Professor Bennoune's comments regarding the need to support people of Muslim heritage who are risking their lives to oppose the so-called Islamic State and other extremist movements.

"The more people who speak out, the safer the people are who do," Bennoune said. "Supporting these smaller civil society initiatives is incredibly important. This is a political, military, and cultural struggle. In Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq you need a political settlement that requires the will of the international community. ... [M]ass popular mobilization against terrorism is also critical."

Karima Bennoune is an author, lecturer, teacher, and international law scholar as well as the first Arab-American to be honored with the Derrick A. Bell Award from the Section on Minority Groups of the Association of American Law Schools. In 2014, she was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her book Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight against Muslim Fundamentalism, now available in paperback from W.W. Norton & Company. In October 2015, she was appointed UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights.  She was recently presented with the 2016 Rights and Leadership Award by IANGEL, the International Action Network for Gender Equity & Law.