Manar Fawakhry
Face to Face/Faith to Faith program, Auburn Theological Seminary

Manar Fawakhry is the director of the Face to Face/Faith to Faith program at Auburn Theological Seminary. She is an expert in dialogue facilitation, with more than 10 years of experience in Arab/Jewish relations in Israel and the United States. The Sister Fund was thrilled to have the opportunity to interview Manar recently, and took the chance to ask her our favorite four questions.

Manar, does your faith empower you as a woman?

I empower myself by choosing what kind of a Muslim woman I would like to be, rather than through anything that a particular form of Islam dictates.

The Quran has very contradictory messages about women’s rights, including both empowering ones and disempowering ones. For example, the Quran can be used to justify hitting, flogging or stoning a woman who disobeys her husband. And in another verse a woman is worth half as much as a man. Nevertheless, elsewhere Islam teaches that “paradise is underneath the feet of mothers.”

These strong contradictory statements can all be found in the Quran. I choose to live with the empowering parts while also recognizing the existence of the disempowering parts.

Here in the West, there is a culture that allows critique and interaction with sacred texts. I realize that in some parts of the world, sacred texts like the Quran cannot be critiqued or questioned. The Holy Book is a word of God and challenging the sacred texts is considered a challenge to God.

Who has been the most influential woman in your life?

My mother is a strong woman of faith who did her Omra (pre-pilgrimage) in Mecca. She did this on her own – a liberating step for an Arab woman in Israel, where my mother was born and still lives. She always revealed the beauty of Islam to me through her practices, strong independence, and equal caring and nurturing for both females and males in the family. Most importantly, her message of peace is repeated on a monthly basis as she meets with both Jewish and Arab Israeli women for dialogue, education and activism.

My mother wears her faith in Islam as a face of love and peace and a heart that reaches out to other women from different faiths, both Christians and Jews. My mother makes it look so easy to be able to rise above some of the inherent challenges in Islam. Even though some might assume my mother is quite traditional because she wears the hijab, her modern clothes and open embrace for all people tell the real story.

Does your faith inform your social activism?

At Face to Face/Faith to Faith, the program I direct at Auburn Theological Seminary, we hold as core the idea that we can see the face of God in our enemies. When enemies become friends, it is the ultimate power of the divine at work. When we see the face of God in “the other,” we see and feel love.

God is love and love is God. I have faith in love. I believe every faith teaches you how and why to love. Love is the driving force in my life – love for self and for others, love for humanity. I believe this is the ultimate divine power for healing that will allow us to thrive as human beings on earth.

Have you ever had a personal “aha” moment? What was it? And what made it so special?

My career path is a continuous discovery and string of aha moments. Peacemaking is a world full of aha’s when strangers and enemies become friends, when indifference and ignorance transform into awareness and compassion, when pain and suffering change through healing and reconciliation. All of this becomes possible when we face ourselves and our history and work on bettering our humanity. This is love and the godly work on earth.