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Moral Courage Project: the launch

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Mar 14, 2008

Wish you were there! Here are photographic highlights, excerpts from my opening statement, some of the blog coverage and memorable words that one guest jotted on his blackberry…

Excerpts from my opening statement:

Robert F. Kennedy observed, “Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society.

Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.”

So, as Bobby Kennedy understood, moral courage is the willingness to risk backlash from your own community as you pursue a greater, common, good.

Here at NYU’s School of Public Service, we believe that developing moral courage is as urgent as it’s ever been — and possibly more so.

Why do I say “more so”? Because we live in a time of identity politics, when it’s relatively easy for angry individuals to point fingers at the outside world and blame others for their own community’s ills.

Far more dangerous, emotionally and sometimes physically, to call out injustice within your group and thereby upset your seemingly natural allies.

The Moral Courage Project addresses one of the great leadership challenges of our time: to transcend the us-versus-them polarity of identity politics. We need to bust out of that polarity because the world’s problems are too complex for dichotomies that diminish us.

We know that avoiding introspection produces dishonest results — a dishonesty that infects human relations, skews public policies and censors talent from which communities would otherwise grow.

It’s because we see this dishonesty everywhere that the Moral Courage Project intends to teach, mentor and engage heretics everywhere. Future events will feature dissident Christians, politically incorrect feminists, whistle-blowing Jews, queer gays (meaning gays and lesbians who challenge the cozy consensus of their movements), self-critical African-Americans, maverick Hispanics and even renegade Republicans!

But I can’t imagine a more worthy champion of moral courage with whom to introduce this project than Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im.

He’s an exile from Sudan, a reform-minded Muslim and the intellectual force behind an upcoming conference called “A Celebration of Heresy: Critical Thinking for Islamic Reform.” Now that’s chutzpah.

We hope you’ll apply tonight’s lessons to your own lives.

Some guests made notes of the lessons — in real time — via their blackberries. A sample of what one young man took away from the event:

> Every orthodoxy started as heresy.

> Heresy is rejuvenation, a source of innovation.

> A man can fail many times, but he is not a failure until he starts blaming others for the failures.

> Religion is a personal experience.

> A state must be secular for a society to be religious.

> When a state enforces Shari’a, they are enforcing law. That is different from a personal commitment.

> “We need a secular state to be better Muslims.”

> Conflict is creative, violence is destructive.

> I seek to challenge, I expect to be resisted (hopefully not overwhelmingly). If I’m not resisted I’m not relevant.

> Ppl will defer to true piety but that is a social act, not a political act.

> There may have been a role for clerics when most could not read, but now that role has passed… like the unions.

> Those who attack violently are declaring their impotence at participating in the discussion, at responding to the ideas on the table.

> “Islamo-fascist” is itself a fascist use of the term. If someone is fascist and also Muslim then they are fascist, period.

> A heretic counters a point of view from within tradition; an infidel does not speak from the voice of tradition.

> I can cease being Muslim, but I can’t cease being human.

Finally, the blogosphere weighs in from different corners of the globe (and various corners of the room!):

* Ali Eteraz

* Political Mavens

* The Sudanese Thinker

* Some Swedish dude

Intrigued enough to learn more about the Moral Courage Project? Maybe even get involved? Here you go.