My Hope for Peace discussion

Jehan Sadat, widow of President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, who was assassinated in 1981, is the author of My Hope for Peace. A lifelong activist for women’s rights, literacy, and humanitarian causes worldwide, she has received more than twenty honorary doctoral degrees and a number of prestigious international awards. She is senior fellow with the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and lives in Virginia and Egypt.

Q: Why did you choose this particular moment to write this particular book?

A: The end of March [2009:] was the thirtieth anniversary of the Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel. In My Hope for Peace I talk about the struggle for peace in the Middle East, the cause for which my husband gave his life.

Q: You talk about other kinds of peace, too.

A: Peace is the defining theme of my life. After my husband was assassinated, it was a very hard time for me. But our love together made me feel a kind of peace inside, and instead of staying at home doing nothing and just living in grief and sadness I tried to come out and start working again—teaching. It is much more peaceful for me to feel that I’m doing something, which will please his soul also.

Q: You also talk about peace as being inherent to Islam.

A: Being here in the United States half of the year, I’ve noticed—especially after 9/11—that Islam is misunderstood in this country. As a Muslim woman, I feel that’s it my duty and the duty of all Muslims—reasonable Muslims, not the fundamentalists, of course—to enjoin others to live a life of brotherhood without distinction. We are to respect and treat all human beings as equal, regardless of creed or color, whether man or woman, civilians or soldiers, rulers or subjects, rich or poor, whatever they are. Islam is in fact a spiritual democracy, radically egalitarian and deeply, deeply concerned with human dignity.

Q: But there are those who espouse violence in religious terms.

A: The Koran plainly states that killing an innocent person is tantamount to killing all mankind. And you see they are doing such things and say they are Muslims; they are not. They don’t have the right to wage war—as they say, jihad—against Westerners, Muslims, or any kind of people. Moreover, suicide bombers are anathema to Islam. Whoever commits suicide will never go to paradise.

Check out the rest of PBC's interview with Jehan Sadat here

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