The CEDAR Forum on Difference is a blog focusing on contemporary issues of living with difference in a global society. Contributors include CEDAR network alumni, staff, and associates who have been part of the CEDAR experience and write from within their local contexts on issues of difference and public life. The forum serves to critique popular assumptions on religion and difference through the experience and insight of the CEDAR network. The views expressed in the CEDAR Forum on Difference are those of the individual authors and are intended both to generate discussion and to extend the CEDAR experience.
Latest Posts
Culture for Peace, Development and Rights (CPDR) established in Kenya
It is evident from lived experience that cultures are distinct from each other; each culture has unique elements. However, attempts to address human problems—conflicts, violence, poverty, etc.—tend to propose generalized solutions that create tensions among local cultures. Solutions, after all, cannot always be generalized. When standardized approaches to peace, development, and rights programs ignore the…Read More »Difference and Its Demons, by Adam B. Seligman
Of all the many uncomfortable truths this election has forced us all to face, surely one of the most important is our discomfort with difference. This attitude was made clear in the months leading up to the elections, in much of the campaign rhetoric and the slogans repeated at many rallies. It was made clear…Read More »Why Do Central Asians Join ISIS?, by John Heathershaw and David W. Montgomery
Why do Central Asians join ISIS? What little we know suggests that the non-religious reasons Central Asians join ISIS are more important than the religious factors often cited by analysts. For almost a year, the foremost question in the minds of security analysts of Central Asia has been why some Central Asians have joined “jihad”…Read More »Who Says Syria's Calling? Why It Is Sometimes Better to Admit That We Just Do Not Know, by John Heathershaw and David W. Montgomery
The International Crisis Group’s (ICG) latest report on the radicalization of Muslims in Central Asia, Syria Calling: Radicalization in Central Asia (20 Jan 2015), focuses specifically on the recruitment of Central Asians to Islamic State (IS) and the consequences of this phenomenon for the region’s security. This short report repeats the ungrounded assumptions of earlier…Read More »Yoga on the Road in Uganda, by Rahel Wasserfall
On Wednesday December 17th 2014, after an exhausting bus ride on bumpy, dusty, and unpaved roads, we finally reached Kyaka II. We were traveling to this refugee settlement in western Uganda as part of the Equator Peace Academy’s (EPA) two-week program “Coping with Refugees in a Foreign Land,” which was devoted to the refugee question.…Read More »