Shaista Ali, a Human Rights enthusiast and passionate feminist has been volunteering for AMINA since last year. Having completed her LLM in International Criminal Justice & Human Rights, developed a love for defending human rights and engaging in Women's rights issues such as domestic violence. Her long-term aspirations are to become a Human Rights Activist, change the status quo and serve humanity.
Here she tells us about her experience at the You Can Change This conversation cafe event in Dundee last week...
I was honoured to be part of the You Can Change This Launch event and Conversation Cafe which took place at the Dundee Cairn Centre on the 28th March 2013. It was great to see the campaign being endorsed by a number of different people such as, Chief Inspector Graham Goulden from the Violence Reduction Unit of Scottish Police and Talat Yaqoob from White Ribbon Scotland.
I was shocked by some of the statistics on violence against women in Scotland and I felt that as an individual I should do more to help raise awareness and take pro-active steps to prevent this.
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| Open discussion on forced marriage. Great to see a cross-section of the communities participating! |
The campaign launched by AMINA-MWRC is a powerful campaign which aims to eradicate violence against women by encouraging people to break the silence which allows it to thrive. We are asked to make a promise and become change-makers in our communities. Violence against women is a predominant issue which exists in all cultures and the purpose of this campaign is to stand united and put a stop to it. It was great to see such a cross section of the communities at the event young and old, Muslims and non-Muslims, Police, students, social workers and more - everyone was there to speak, to listen and to learn from each other. It was wonderful to see the community come together to learn more about why we should be doing more about all forms of violence against women and gender inequality. The only thing I would say is there should be more men attending events like this!
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| Imam Vali Hussein discussing the Islamic perspective on violence against women and the role of religious leaders in addressing the issue. |
Looking around the room, you can feel the tensed atmosphere with people listening attentively to the statistics, watching the short videos and sharing concerns. Violence against women not only affects the victim but affects society as a whole. Chief Inspector Graham Goulden’s short presentation on violence against women was inspiring and motivated me to change societal attitudes.
"Domestic violence is not a waman’s issue but a man’s issue because most of the time it is the men who are the perpetrators of the crime." Chief Inspector Graham Goulden.
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| Talat Yaqoob's discussion table on 'Engaging men in anti-violence against women work' |
The event progressed with short round table discussions on some of the issues relating to violence against women such as, ‘The reality of rape and sexual violence’, ‘Reporting to the police’ and ‘The Islamic perspective on violence against women’. My favourite one in particular was ‘How men can get involved in campaigning’ by Talat Yaqoob. Talat’s enthusiastic and quirky sense of humour on the male chauvinist attitude our society holds left me in giggles.
The highlight of the event for me was the thought-provoking short film including a number of Muslim men from the wider Scottish community pledging to be a change-maker. This was fascinating for me, as being a Muslim feminist myself and having written on the issue of violence against women, it was satisfying to see Muslim men uniting together to end such a horrendous abuse of women's rights.
The power lies in our hands; we have the choice to do something about violence against women and we must do something in order to help our society flourish.
As Gandhi once said, "Be the change that you wish to see in the world."Speak soon,
Shaista Ali
Did any of you attend the event? What was your favourite part? Where should the next conversation cafe be held? - Comment Below :)
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