The Amana Media Initiative

The Amana Media Initiative is a network of journalists, community leaders, academics, non-governmental organisations (NGO) representatives, and other professionals from across Asia. Amana aims to encourage contemporary debate between Muslims and other faith and secular communities about the role of Islam within today's social and political realities. Amana also aims to contribute to a greater understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims by providing a forum for progressive Muslim voices and coverage of peaceful initiatives, and general human rights issues.

The Amana Media Initiative engages in the following activities.

• The Amana Magazine - a free quarterly English-language print and electronic publication that includes coverage of key news events, positive initiatives, and progressive Muslim thought for general readership.
• The Amana Guidebook to Understanding and Reporting Muslim Issues in Asia - is being developed for non-Muslim journalists covering Muslim issues in Asia. It will contain information designed to be useful to people professionally or personally engaged with Muslim communities and issues in Asia.
• The Amana website - provides an outlet for news as it happens, utilising the internet's capacity as an open and immediate news forum. Similar to the Amana Magazine, all content on the website is selected by Amana editors to ensure its accuracy and relevance to Amana’s stated goals, with an emphasis on quality. In many cases, the news material published on the website will also be included in the Amana Magazine.
• The Amana Media Skills Training Program (AMSP) - Each year 25 young Muslim and non-Muslim journalists will be trained in investigative journalism, with reporting, editing and information technology skills. In part through this initiative, a set of guidelines will be published concerning the reporting of Islamic issues. A major component of these training programmes will be seminars and workshops linking young aspiring journalists with accredited and experienced journalists from a variety of faiths and fields. Each workshop will tackle a specific theme which directly affects Muslim communities in Asia (e.g., violence against women, terrorism, cross-cultural communication, inter-faith understanding, human rights, etc.)
• The UDHR Analysis Project - using short essays, each covering key articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), this project aims to create publications for general readership, detailing how the UDHR and the religion of Islam share fundamental values and are in no way incompatible. Amana will focus specifically on women's rights, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion, and other critical areas.
• School of Peace Studies and Conflict Transformation Introduction - aims to create a new generation of peace workers, peace defenders, and peace negotiators towards catalysing positive changes in the community towards prevention of conflict and promotion and sustenance of peace in the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Asia and beyond. To develop a resource and knowledge base for young social workers, young Muslim intellectuals, community leaders and philanthropic organisations and institutions. Courses are offered on peace studies, research, methods of conflict transformation and negotiation skills.
• The Amana Discussion Group - A Yahoo! Group list was created to help share information among members - since August 2006 the discussion forum was moved to the Amana web server.

Peace.

Amana means trust, which stems from "aman", the Arabic word for peace. The Amana Media Initiative was previously known as the Asian Muslim Action Network.