Thirty- One (31) volunteers of the students andd faculty members of the College of Islamic Sciences at the University of Baghad joined the Monitoring and Analysis Team of the National Center for Combating Hate Speech at Masarat Foundation for Cultural and Media Development (MCMD). Participants received condensed training courses on the mechanisms of monitoring and analyzing hate speeches. The training was provided by five founding members of the National Center who demonstrated to the participants, through practical exercises, how to monitor hate messages in religious and political discourse in the media and social networking sites. Dr. Mohammed Al-Turaihi, Dean of the College of Islamic Sciences and one of the founding members of the Center, said that the workshop is a step in the right direction to limit the spread of hate speeches in Iraqi society. He called on the students to make the best efforts they could to confront these speeches and replace them with messages of love and tolerance.The College of Islamic Sciences at the University of Baghdad is the second academic forum to join the team of combating hate speeches in the National Center after the University of Basra. It is hoped that the Faculty of Political Sciences at al-Mustansiriya University and the UNESCO Chair at the University of Kufa will join the National Center for Combating Hate Speeches in the coming days.This workshop is part of a program that includes the training of 800 volunteers throughout Iraq representing the Monitoring and Analysis Team at the National Center for Combating Hate Speeches at MCMD in cooperation with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation of Germany.
