Professor Bennoune Speaks on ‘Islamic State' at Commonwealth Club Event
Professor Karima Bennoune spoke on the violent extremist group known as the Islamic State at a Commonwealth Club of California event held on April 17 in San Francisco. Audio from the panel discussion is available for listening on the Commonwealth Club website.
Professor Bennoune began the program with an overview of the so-called Islamic State, stating that the much-publicized execution of western hostages is "only the tip of the iceberg of its brutality." The Islamic State "does menace the security of western countries, but make no mistake: the truly existential threat is to Muslim majority societies and their inhabitants," she said. The group promotes hatred of religious minorities as well as those whose practice of Islam is different from their own, and adherents engage in torture, cruel punishments, mass executions, and systematic violence against women, she said.
"It is first and foremost a threat to the human rights of the people on the ground, and all too often, we forget those victims," said Bennoune. "We don't tell their stories. We don't show their faces on television."
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. She recently 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.