Doha Family Institute: foundations for optimism
Dr. Farooq Hassan*
(Synopsis of paper presented at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Pakistan
Family Forum at Lahore on the International Family Day, 16th May, 2006)
I recently had the opportunity to briefly tour Doha, Qatar, to meet with the Managing Director of the newly established Doha International Institute for Family Studies & Development. He is Professor Richard Wilkins, my good friend from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah where he had been the initiator of a similar program some years ago. The newly established Institute owes its doctrinal and visionary foundations to the ideas of Her Highness Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missnad, Consort of His Highness the Emir of Qatar.
This institution is an independent center for higher learning and facilitating the disseminations of current laws and discussions on the study of the Family. Its genesis is the decision of Her Highness to follow up concretely on her announcement at the Conclusion of the last Session of the Doha International Family Conference of 30 November 2004. In that important meeting Her Highness had declared her intention to set up and create such an institution.
That such pious and timely aspirations have actually borne fruits so expeditiously, is a living tribute to her clear determination to create an intellectual atmosphere of understanding and propagating the fundamental human values in following the historical acceptance of family as basic tenet of civilizations in major human rights texts that emanated with the creation of the UN Charter, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The leading text of this nature is to be found in Article 16 (3) thereof which assets in categorical terms:
“The Family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by the society and the State.”
Despite this philosophical message, derived essentially from the teachings of great faiths and the monotheistic religions, Family as an institution has stood threatened in this century from the strong efforts of antifamily advocates in the 20th century. Dr. Carlson observes with acute perception when he says: “Foes have mounted attacks on all aspects of the natural Family, from the bond of marriage to the birth of the children to true democracy of free homes” (See Dr. Allan Carlson, The Natural Family Manifesto, 2005, page 5). This campaign was advocated on a very wide basis internationally with the result it had global adherents by 1990s. The UN declared 1994 as the year of the family but, cynically, the opponents too embarked upon their own advocacy of divergent views. Internationally the problem has serious ramifications in the Western world which has led to vigorous efforts to thwart this danger from pro-family protagonists.
Then the UN was persuaded to observe 2004 as the Decade of the Family. This anniversary observance was stipulated by the UN General Assembly decision number 164/75 given on 18th December, 2002. This year produced a tremendous amount of scholarship and erudite work by pro family intellectuals, non governmental bodies and religiously based institutions. Prominent international events of 2004 that can be cited for this pro family momentum are the Mexico World Congress of Families III, the Kuala Lumpur Family International Conference and the Doha International Conference, to which some detailed reference may be helpful.
The credit for having hosted the leading intellectual event of this decade year, in the form of the Doha International Conference on Family, goes to the State of Qatar. Let me therefore applaud the State of Qatar, the worthy Emir of Qatar, His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thanni, for showing such firm commitment to this fundamental postulate of all humanity. The specific gratitude that should be noted is all due to dynamic leadership of Her Highness, Sheikha Mouza bint Nasser Al-Misnad, who is also the President of the Supreme Council of Family Affairs in this country. She graciously decided to lend her auspicious supervision to hold this landmark international conference to celebrate the decade of the adoption of the year of the Family in Doha. Her guidance was really instrumental in organizing that conference; since then, she has been the main architect of the implementation of the ideas of the Doha Declaration of 2004. The creation of this Institute is, therefore, the real beginning of realizing the goals set out in the above mentioned Doha mandate.
As I believe I am amongst the first international visitors to this new institution of tremendous significance, a word about what I saw in Doha regarding its working and operations would be in order. The Doha Family Institute is an independent body sponsored by The Qatar Foundation, which works directly under the supervision of Her Highness and a distinguished Board of Governors. By its creation, the goals of the Doha process have to be achieved. It will work in co-ordination with Qatar’s Supreme Council for Family Affairs, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, where appropriate, with the other academic institutions within the Education City of Qatar.
I may add that during my recent visit the Doha Family Institute kindly took me to tour this Education City. It is simply awesome in its operational capacity and facilities. Both as a student and a professor I have had the opportunity and privilege of being at the best academic institutions in the world such as Oxford, Cambridge, Columbia, and Harvard. I can say, therefore, on the basis of empiricism, how well, comparatively speaking, the Education City, a basic foundation of intellectual endeavors in Qatar, should be perceived. The Qatar Education City has all possible amenities and it is for the students and faculties to produce world class scholarship with such modern infrastructure.
Amongst the Objectives of the Institute are:
1. To cooperate with the Qatari institutions mentioned above, e.g., The Supreme Council of Family Affairs to achieve the ideals of the Doha Declaration.
2. Networking with systems for accomplishing the goals set out above with efficiency and produce erudite academic work.
3. To work for organizing international conferences relating to Family.
4. To bring together prominent government leaders and scholars to discuss Family Research.
5. To encourage international network of family specialists to implement the spirit and ethos of the Doha Declaration.
6. To publish and bring out timely publications dealing with latest work and research material on Family.
In terms of its broad institutional working format, the Doha Family institute will work in two separate and operative branches, viz:
Research and Development, and
Implementation and Social Action.
With limited initial staffing, this ambitious planning will require additional recruitment. It is planned to do so in the near future, and, as such, it will be a process which I call a “living experiment”.
There exist at the international level a number of institutions which have as their focus the launching of activities which basically defend family values. A few of them are called “international” or are “world ” oriented in their approach since they aim to have a setup which is truly transnational or, alternatively, aim to achieve results that are of such a character. So far as I am aware, this is the first institute of this class that has been created in a non Western milieu and, in particular, in a Muslim environment. I hope, therefore, that this particular aspect of its genesis will be kept in mind while expanding the current activities of its academic and intellectual work.
Understanding the Islamic Message on Family
Islam places the highest significance in life to the family as an institution, towards its different members and the duty of “care” and responsibility in those that have the worldly ability to provide assistance and help to others in the family that need such aid. The message of Islam is contained in the word of God, the Holy Quran itself. These citations cited in my many works on this subject, which are published and also available on the net, will hopefully stress the high significance that our faith places on this matter.
Throughout its history, Islamic faith has been both deeply cherished as well as misunderstood for its emphasis on enveloping the entirety of a person’s life with its normative structure of rules of conduct and precepts. Amongst the major norms of such expected behavior are those that are devised to apply to the institution of the family. Simultaneously, the jurisprudence and moral philosophy of the Muslim faith also acutely focuses on the larger matter pertaining to the subject of human rights.
The contemporary Western World similarly accords tremendous significance to these topics. However, as I see it, the evolution of some newer norms and concepts in the international legal field has been such that, in respect of crucial details, there is a visible tendency to have the rights of the family give up some of its historical and inherent hierarchal position and status to specific and newly developed “rules” in the broader field of human rights. For instance, as Rapporteur of two major international UN sponsored conferences on the “rights” of the Family and the Child in Islamabad in May of 2005, I frankly reported that “rules” of “law”, and not merely soft international law, were being made by Islamic nations and major Asian countries. The areas that were focused upon pertained to “rights” that were of “reproductive” kind and those loosely referred to as “spanking” practices.
In its newer researches, therefore, I feel that such perspectives will be examined by the experts that work in, or for, or who will be guiding this Institute’s operational activities. Given the stark reality that all major Western nations are now set to create perhaps “norms”, some legal in their content, that may work against the traditional concepts of Family, the avocations of Muslim nations in this regard are of paramount significance. It is fact that, but for the work of Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in particular at the Human Rights Commission, already great damage to doctrinal purity of family may have resulted.
The “expertise” required to give quality to such intellectual research work would be of premier importance to this new institution. As such, I have no doubt that the Institute’s Administration will provide the needed direction in harnessing the required talent for this purpose. Since most of current thinking revolves around sociological and legal metamorphosis, collaboration with high level academicians would be helpful, from both the domains of social sciences and law, to achieve the results and intellectual products that I have in mind.
Be that as it may, the ground work of a new edifice has been created in the domain of Family studies and I am very hopeful that the coming months will be productive from the perspectives of its genesis. Already, I am informed by Professor Wilkins that two regional symposia have been held, one in Eastern Europe and another one in East Africa in the last four months since this Institute since formally created in Doha. It will necessary to project the work that is undertaken by this new institution. However, I am clear in my mind that, in the long run, it will be the quality of the work, and the publications the Institute is able to produce, more than just media projections, that will count towards the establishment of an enviable reputation. If it undertakes teaching as well, then those who come to learn will become the best ambassadors of this new body, but only after they leave. I wish the Institute well!
About the author:
∗ D.Phil.; B A Juris, MA. M.Litt, (Oxon), DCL (Columbia), DIA (Harvard), Of Lincoln’s Inn, Barrister at Law, UK, Attorney at Law, US, Senior Advocate Supreme Court (QC) of Pakistan; Special UN Ambassador for Family for the World Family Alliance, Advisor to four Prime Ministers of Pakistan on Law & Foreign Affairs; Delegate to the UN, NY, & to the Human Rights Commission on Human Rights & to the Sub-Commission on Human Rights, Geneva, Leader of Pakistan’s Delegation to the International Criminal Court Prep Coms., NY & Delegate to UN GA Sessions. Also, inter alia, on the Faculties of Foreign Affairs & Law, Harvard University, the Secretary General, American Asian Institute of Strategic Studies, Boston. International Legal Counsel before transnational Tribunals & US Congress. David M Kennedy Scholar of International Studies, Kennedy Center, BYU 2003-4. President, Pakistan Family Forum, Member International Advisory Board, United Families International.
3 comments permalink | Jock Gill | Community, Culture
Farooq,
In this essay, you write:
“responsibility in [of?] those that have the worldly ability to provide assistance and help to others in the family that need such aid.”
What this suggests to me is that Islam recognizes that we all have problems, some personal and internal and others external and circumstantial, that we can not solve by ourselves but can better deal with if we cooperate and work together for the common good — of the family in your case, but, for the larger society as well.
How would this be expressed by a Muslim to a Muslim?
What I also see is that in the US, and those parts of the so called “Western” world unduly influenced by right wing conservatives and neo-liberal economists, we have been driven to a simplistic view that we are each 100% responsible for all of our problems. Worse, if we can not solve our individual problems, we must be all of stupid, lazy and incompetent. Consequently, there is no obligation to support such people. The result is, of course, a perversion of the notion that what you do to the least of you, you do unto Me. For the radical right, we are not our brother’s keepers. Of course this view is also a complete rejection of the ” Justice as Fairness” philosophy of John Rawls as well.
I have written about it this way:
As a society, we are today split on a key organizing principle: We vs I.Me
1] Is it “We” the people who accept our responsibility to work together to overcome problems that we can not solve individually? Do we in fact accept that we all have problems that we cannot solve on our own? Do we the people have obligations to our nation, the greater good, if you will, that transcend our own desires to optimize our own I.Me? This leads more or less to John Rawls’ “Justice as Fairness” See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls
It also leads to an appreciation of the essential role played by social capital, both bonding and bridging, in sustaining a democracy for, of and by “We the people”. See: http://www.infed.org/biblio/social_capital.htm
If we do accept our limits and the need to work together to over come them, what sort of political structures should we work towards? What sort of tax policies, for example, would we implement to support our view of the collaborative role of “We the People”? Do tax cuts benefiting the upper few percent of the wealthiest of us contribute to developing a strong sense of “We, the people” or do they erode it to build up a credo based upon I.Me?
Or, on the other hand, do we reject the above and assert:
2] that we are all 100% responsible for all of our individual situations and problems and that, if we can not solve and overcome them by ourselves alone, we are either, or all of, dumb, lazy, and incompetent? This is what I call the I.Me world view that denies any responsibility for the Common Good, denies that we are all our brothers and sisters keepers, and that utterly rejects Rawls philosophy. Consequently, it puts no value on bridging social capital.
Can there, in fact, be such a thing as a government for of and by “We” the people if we devalue and reject the principles of social capital? If our tax and communications polices, for example, are based purely on the individual, the I.Me view of the world, and thus create barriers to especially bridging social capital, is the term “we” even meaningful? Today, we are so fractured and splintered into “bonding” social groups acting purely as “individuals” that “We” find it almost impossible to work together. Red vs Blue, North vs South, Rural vs Coastal, Religious factions against each other, Right to Life vs The power of the right to chose, Secular Humanism vs Religious Fundamentalism, etc.
An Aside: Does modern mass market consumerism require the triumph of the I.Me over the “We” in order to thrive? Is this a built in seed of our own destruction?
Corporations are now, most regrettably, considered to to be legally persons, thus policies established to optimize individual corporate results are in fact policies that at best minimize, if not destroy, the “We” factor in our society.
In communications, we can see this in the efforts to protect the legacy incumbents who are locked into business plans firmly rooted in 20th century assumptions and conditions: cheap energy, consumers not citizens, 10:1 communications asymmetry, command and control master slave network architecture, etc.
The “fitness landscape” has so dramatically changed in the early 21st century, that attempts to protect these 20th century legacy businesses is akin to an out right denial of evolution. Protecting the legacy incumbents from the forces of change, such as symmetrical peer-to-peer meshing networks, is to essentially to say that they are the protected products of an intelligent design not subject to question and exempt from both he laws of nature and “the market”. This is rubish — utterly reactionary and counter to reality. It can best be liken to the Communist Party in the old Soviet Union refusing to adjust to change. We all know the results that approach famously produced.
Our very democracy is fundamentally dependent upon a robust and dynamic “We” the people. It is time we asked how we can create and sustain the strongest “We”, while respecting the I.Me, and integrating both into something greater than the sum of the parts. Franklin’s understanding of this can be seen in his Junto Club. Junto anyone? See: http://www.juntosociety.com/about.html
In the end, what would be a communications/spectrum policy that put a high value on best efforts to support “We the People” in an ever changing landscape? If we can not figure this out, and act on it, are our best days will behind us.
Professor Fraooq Hassan’s ( a scholar of highest class)comments appear to me to be too generous about the scope and future of this Institute’s activities since really we have not heard much about it. As a leader of liberal and bold public thought in an Islamic environment I respect, however, Dr Hassan’s evaluations of this Qatari initiative. So we wait to look what it will actually does
I have read the comments of Dr. Farooq Hassan on this initiative on Family Studies in the desert kingodm of Qatar. Dr.Fraooq Hassan’s reputaion amongst those who folow the writings of Muslim progressive scholars is exceptional and most cherished. He spoke to us in London the other day in the presence of the former Prime Minister of Pakistan and told us the ills of the society faced by Islamic peoples in his native country. However, we are not sure if these hopes of “optimism” are going to be fulfilled by monarchs and thier spouses on “Family” in the Gulf states! It looks like the creation of a doll house for merely esoteric purposes. It remains to be seen what if anything is actually accomplihed by this Institute apart from giving some cushy jobs to a few a friendly American professors.