Area Physician Named to New Religious Freedom Panel

A Glendale doctor and president of the Muslim Women’s League has been named to a new panel created by Secretary of State Warren Christopher to advise the Clinton Administration on issues of religious freedom around the world.

Dr. Laila Al-Marayati, who served as a delegate to an international summit on women’s issues in China, will sit on the Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad. The committee will help shape administration policies toward countries where religious minorities “face incarceration or harassment because of their faith,” according to the State Department.

“The committee’s mission has a broad scope, to promote religious freedom and tolerance and to find ways to deal with religious intolerance, both internationally and in our country as well,” said Al-Marayati, 34.

Al-Marayati, who was born to an American mother and Palestinian father, said she was appointed to the committee because of her work with the 400-member, Los Angeles-based Muslim Women’s League, which is dedicated to erasing stereotypes about women in the Muslim faith and to protecting their rights.

She said she will work with the committee not only on issues and situations where Muslims are persecuted--such as in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Muslims were subjected to “ethnic cleansing” by Serb forces--but on issues affecting all religious groups.

“We have a very diverse group of people from different faith backgrounds, and that will help increase understanding and decrease misperceptions,” she said. “Issues of religious freedom are dealt with under the broad spectrum of human rights, so we will be looking at our human rights policies around the world.”

The 20-member advisory committee, which will be headed by Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck, includes representatives of the Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Mormon and Catholic and other major American faiths, plus academic leaders. Members will serve two-year terms and the group will meet twice a year in Washington.

Shattuck, in a statement released Tuesday, said the creation of the committee “represents this administration’s commitment to address these issues with new and creative means. Religious freedom is a right we hold sacred in America. It is a right we would look to see exercised in every corner of the globe.”