An Active Peace Leader on the Rise

-FARAH NAJ-

Born into a Muslim family in Bangladesh, Farah Naj Jahan carved her own path and now holds a self-proclaimed “secular mentality.” While this counterculture move poses significant challenges, it has also positioned Farah to be a unique peace leader in her community supporting women religious leaders as cornerstones for peacebuilding.

Farah emerged into peacebuilding through her own personal experiences. Farah became a target due to her beliefs. People did not support or accept Farah identifying as secular from a Muslim family, and found her beliefs to be an insult and an attack against their own. This was exacerbated as Farah engaged in local interfaith community work and social activism. Farah and her family experienced bombarding questioning about her ideologies and life choices; and this questioning escalated, leading to the creation of a false social media profile used to threaten and intimidate Farah. “After that they shared out all my personal information and spread news that I didn’t support...I get messages, texts, phone calls that are threatening.” Farah experienced significant mental trauma, and with the support of family, friends, school administration, police, and local organizations, Farah found space to shift locations and receive the personal care needed to heal. Farah shares, “no woman is encouraged to work in this space in my country,” and she continues that those who threatened her mental and physical situation as such did so to instill fear, to make people scared to engage in work in this field. Farah strongly and fiercely states, “I’m never scared about that.”

Farah used this experience to propel her into the work of media literacy and peacebuilding. “I was part of the group that did not have enough media literacy and how to manage social media. In my country people already use Facebook, email, Instagram, and other social media, but they don’t have proper guidelines or media literacy about it.” She underwent training on social media literacy and conflict resolution, and started working with a grassroots organization, alongside current PPA member Ananda Kumar Biswas, to bring these skills to more students in Bangladesh. From here, her path blossomed. Farah participated in training with KAICIID focused on peacebuilding, inner peace, and managing community, and completed an internship as a Changemaker with Peace First, completing a project titled "Check Before You Share." Additionally, Farah worked with BRAC Bangladesh as a psycho-social counselor in their Disrupting Cross-Border Trafficking Network project. She lived on the high-risk zone of the Bangladesh-India border counselling women and children who were survivors of trafficking.

She then launched her first project with students and religious leaders to work towards peace. Her aim was to shift curriculums that teach against other religions, to counter fundamentalist teachings, and to bring them together towards understanding and coexistence. Across five regions in Bangladesh, Farah conducted training on how to identify fake news, videos, pictures, etc. combined with interfaith conflict resolution. This unique blend enables individuals to identify when people attempt to stir conflict and hatred against other religions through false content, and bridge people and cultures.

After joining the Peace Practice Alliance, Farah expanded this work. Farah identified women religious leaders as a key pillar in communities for promoting peace practice. “Women religious leaders are motivators,” Farah describes. Local women religious leaders serve as close supporters of mothers in communities, and the mothers then pass knowledge and practice to their children. By working with local women religious leaders to develop tools for peace, Farah intends to go straight to community leadership who then spark ripples of peace practice through their respective communities. Already throughout the pandemic, Farah has trained 250 students and religious leaders, and has cultivated dear, trusting relationships with community leaders and women she calls “peace mothers” across different faiths.

Farah is an active peace leader on the rise, and an inspiring example of the power of young women peace leaders. On top of the powerful training she conducts with her team in Bangladesh, she works with the Online Circle for Compassion as a Bangladesh Coordinator, and works with fellow women peacebuilder Sohini Jana on writing and publishing about Bangladesh-India interfaith relationships. She is also pursuing higher education in India, exclaiming, “I can work on peace wherever I live,” with the hopes of establishing her social media literacy and conflict work into its own organization.

“I believe in communication and dignity,” Farah states, and she fearlessly and fiercely demonstrates to us all how to live those beliefs in action.