A Message to Muslims In the West - John Esposito

why I organized this program and why this particular speaker I can talk about that for a semester I teach a course on almost that subject but I would mention a few things and then I introduce the speaker tonight for those of us who are in academia for a long time one issue which was always part of at least my training in general was that religion and spirituality is either very private or it's on its way out this was part of the modernization theory and modernity as a social science they were told that as modernity comes religion goes out a theme professor Huntington told us a long time ago before he became famous to reintroduce religion in what politics again so for that reason I would argue that not only religion is back it never left but more than ever before it is part of the public life and also part of the political life both here and abroad since the Iranian Revolution in 1979 the role of religion in more politics has changed in fact the one of the most important factor in shaping international politics today is the preoccupation of not only people in the third world in looking into religion as a force of political mobilization cultural revitalization cultural revival but also a major preoccupation for the Western world or the Christian world in dealing with the rest of the humanity especially when it comes to the Islamic world so for that reason alone that is the reemergence of the role of religion in world politics I think we have in our justification to have this gathering but more important than that perhaps is the future of an emerging community in the United States and in the West in general and particularly the United States the Muslim community and how it relates to its broader community called the Christian Judeo Christian community in the United States and how that interaction between these two communities would have an impact on the American perceptions of the world and how they behave not only internationally but also towards this new emerging community in the United States and no other person I think in this world that I know is more qualified to talk about this subject than our guest speaker tonight John Esposito I don't know how to introduce him so I would do justice to his contribution I can talk about his books it's about 20 books I think I can talk about his academic background his degrees but I think perhaps more than anything else I see him as a person who has dedicated his life to a better understanding between two important communities not only here but around the globe and I would say this with certainty that his contribution to the Muslim community in particular in the United States and abroad has been known has been more than any other Muslim scholar or otherwise in the last 10 years he's professor of religion and international affairs and professor of Islamic studies he is founding director of Muslim Christian understanding at Georgetown University he got his degree in 1974 from Temple University in Islamic studies and comparative religion some of his most famous books that many of you who are my students know by heart Islam and politics fourth edition Islam the straight path which considered to be one of the best introduction book to Islam by a non Muslim Islam gender and social change political Islam revolution radicalism or reform religion and global order Islam and democracy and I would say one of his most important contribution is the Oxford encyclopedia of the modern Islamic world which is in the fourth volume and I'm hoping that future volumes would come out pretty soon I don't want to waste your time and embarrass him although he told me yesterday that he will not be embarrassed easily it's my great pleasure to introduce you a great friend and a great scholar and a man of wisdom John Esposito thank you very much I appreciate that very generous introduction you know I was thinking when I was sitting in the audience how much things have changed in 1967 when I first went to graduate school for a doctorate the chairman of the department suggested that I take a course in Islam and I remember my reaction was why I knew very little about Islam I knew very little about Arabs and what I knew didn't necessarily motivate me to want to learn more and then I began to study with one of the Muslim professors who came there and decided that I was going to get my doctorate to which the reaction was on the part of my mother you'll never get a job she was very close to correct on that on the part of my colleagues why would you ever do anything like that they called it going into the abracadabra field training yourself like I used to kit and say in those days it was like announcing to your mother you were going to be a shepherd in the United States or in New York I mean it was just it just didn't make any sense at all at a certain point my mother asked me to ask my professor my Muslim professor what his children were going to be he had five children this was Ishmael al farabi and his smile told me what he wanted his children to be since I told my mother a physician scientist engineer and so my mother said now go back and tell him if none of his children are going to be scholars of Islam why does she want an Italian American Catholic to study Islam and to be unemployed so as I grew up in New York which is a very cosmopolitan area for as far as you could walk there were no mosques one didn't even have a sense of a mosque if you thought of a mosque it was something that was overseas if you did think of a Muslim it with somebody who was overseas when I finished my degree in 1974 I discovered what it meant to go into near unemployment and it was for five or six years in which there was absolutely no interest in Islam I obtained a job teaching everything but Islam I would send out book proposals maybe a hundred 97 wouldn't answer the other three would say great idea but there's no market if you looked at most colleges and universities you didn't find Islam in the curriculum high schools and grammar schools forget it and look at where we are today only 20 25 30 years later I have trouble saying 30 years later it so that ages me so I'll say 20 25 30 years later we no longer talk about Islam in the West we have to talk about Islam in the West within my Senate we have a special division or program in fact we have a conference coming up in April it's actually the conference is being called Muslims of the Diaspora we decided not just talking about sort of Muslims in the West we have Islam as the second or third largest religion in the United States and in Europe so it's not only Islam as a global reality 1.2 billion Muslims more than 56 Muslim countries but Islam is now part and parcel of the United States and of Europe as I like to say it's late incoming and late in realization but in many ways to use poor syntax in English Muslims are us not just us as part of the global community us as Americans or it would be us as Brits us as French citizens this is indeed a remarkable reality how are we going to respond to this how will we all respond to this how will we face the reality that Islam is both a global and domestic presence and a global and domestic force and therefore a global and domestic challenge I'm going to talk about it at two levels one in terms of if you will Muslim Christian relations globally and then because I can never resist it when I have a fair number of Muslims in the audience I will talk about the challenge as I see it to the Muslim community something which I'm often invited to do and something which I know that when people don't like what I hear then they say why don't we need to listen to him he's not a Muslim so it's a sort of interesting you're in a very good situation if you like what I say you can say it's amazing how a non-muslim can know the coof I got it right on the other hand if you don't like it you can say aha what do you expect if you want to understand the challenge I would put it in terms of two phrases those who speak of a clash of civilizations and those who talk about a civilizational dialogue about five or six years ago where as I was watching the Gulf War unfold I was very concerned about this notion of clash of civilizations Huntington had not written his piece yet but I just had a sense that the way things were shaping up there was this danger and I wrote a book called the Islamic threat myth or reality but I remember having the concern as the book was with the publisher it hadn't come out yet that maybe I was wrong maybe this sense of confrontation was going to pass you know the Gulf War would pass and somehow everything would be wonderful and in fact that kind of issue a challenges out there on the other hand in the last five years the first major speaker at our Center in addition to the Ayatollah who visited me the first day I opened the center five years ago about a half hour after I opened the Senate and caused all kinds of comments throughout the school of foreign service even though it's a school of international affairs people just couldn't couldn't believe that we had an Ayatollah walking into the building let alone coming down to my Center and I remember sticking my head out the door and saying there's a new boy in town we've got a new approach that you know in the university but then we had Anwar Ibrahim come the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia and he gave a major address received the Presidential Medal and it was called towards a civilizational dialogue and more recently as you know President Khatami of Iran has talked about civilizational dialogue and so we have those two options out there and those options therefore are not only being disc within the West but they are being discussed among Muslim leaders in terms of relations between the Muslim world in the West what can we say about the relationship of Islam in the West past and present on the one hand it's a difficult topic to talk about because both sides have their perception of the other both sides have engaged as indeed Iran and the United States is engaged for the last 20 years in a process of mutual Satan ization in a process at times of mutual demonization from the early spread and expansion of Islam to the Crusades to the Inquisition to the Ottoman Empire to European colonialism to the Cold War to the post Cold War there have indeed been points of conflict and confrontation no one can deny that and I will talk about them tonight but you will note when I get to the 21st century the question is whether we're going to choose to move beyond them or to just stay comfortably talking about them but those points of conflict and confrontation have been there and the irony is the conflict and confrontation came not only because of differences they came because the similarities the very similarities that I will argue become the basis for moving forward together were in the old days reasons for confrontation were taken that way the spread of Islam was taken as a theological political and civilizational threat by Western Christendom why theologically it would sound like we were talking about similarities Muslims believed in the one true God as do Christians and Jews Muslims believed in a long line of prophets they believed in revelation to Moses to Jesus and one final time to the Prophet Muhammad they believed in accountability and responsibility in line social justice family values and they believed if you will in eternal accountability heaven and hell and yet this itself became a source for conflict again why if Christians were comfortable in saying that Christianity had come to succeed Judaism that the revelation had somehow been distorted and now they would be a new revelation Christians were not comfortable when Muslims came along and extended that same logic and said we have one final revelation now coming to the Prophet Muhammad in the Quran if Christians were comfortable in saying our community has now been given a universal mission to spread God's will they were challenged and threatened when Muslims came along and said and God has now given that mission over to us so in a in an interesting kind of way theological similarities became a sauce for in a sense theological confrontation at times politically obviously the spread of Islam the extent to which it overwhelmed Eastern Christianity was seen as a threat the extent to which had spread globally it was seen as a competitive threat and of course civilization and culturally this was the case and yet there were many points of cooperation these points of cooperation and indeed of civilizational dialogue are too easily passed over part of that is that in many ways we are more comfortable you know we can criticize the media today for being concerned about headline events and conflict and you put the media on and they don't talk about what's good they just put it on and all you see of the murders and the crimes but in fact that's what human nature is also attracted to the media wouldn't be doing it if people didn't look for it and that's what sells books and that's what sells TV shows and that's what grabs people's interest and so in a strange kind of way we engage in that ourselves you know we talk about our sieve and historical past we see the points of conflict we often don't talk talk about the points of cooperation as Islam spread Christians and Jews played a major role in the Islamic empire that's a major part of history some are aware of it most aren't as Islam developed its great civilization and culture it would have never been done without Muslims learning from Western philosophy in science and mathematics and then building on that as well as obviously also drawing off in their in their primary if you will disciplines and Sciences Quranic studies studies of hadith Sharia Osama fish etc but in terms of that civilizational dialogue was very much there it's very interesting that today is March 7th if I have it right and I cannot believe this my mother would be so happy today is the feast of st. Thomas Aquinas Saint Thomas Aquinas is one of the great Christian and Catholic theologians and philosophers of all times Thomas Aquinas was able to be the philosopher and theologian that he was because his he not only Thomas Aquinas but his teacher drew heavily off Arab and Islamic thought and culture that kind of confluence is often overlooked those points of contact and cooperation are often overlooked and indeed part of the problem we have is that we often see the world in terms of either/or rather than saying there are points of conflict there are points of cooperation what can we learn from it how do we move forward but what about the 21st century what about Muslim Christian relations in the 21st century well that gets kind of interesting and tricky I will say some things that to some in the audience may be obvious but my experiences that they are not - neither the average Muslim that I come across nor the average American they know part of what I say but they don't understand the way in which I'm going to frame what I said to understand muslim-christian relations today in the 21st century to understand the relationship if you will of Islam and the West and of Muslims in the West with let's say Jewish and Christian communities one has to appreciate a couple of major not just facts but in a sense see them as realities and experiences both Muslims and Christians bring to bear their historical baggage when I was a young scholar I was on a panel at the at the University of Chicago and Fuzzle Rahman one of the great Muslim scholars of the 20th century teaching at the University of Chicago chaired the session and I had to catch a plane to go home and I was very nervous not being able to catch the plane to go home and also nervous about how well I would come across because I was with three very senior scholars and fessor Rahman got up and he said because I was the last one to speak could I ask my brothers on the panel to skip over their denunciation of the Crusades and European colonialism and American neo colonialism and get to the heart of their talk whatever it is so that professor Esposito can have a chance to speak what he was really saying was that no matter what your topic was if you had a Muslim scholar Muslim scholar would begin by denouncing the past you say you know and even if the talk had nothing to do with European colonialism somehow it was connected to European colonialism or the Crusades you know and that's not to deny the reality of the past but that was there and similarly one can talk about the other side but the reality is that we both have that kind of baggage and then something else happens most people forget that indeed most people in the West knew nothing about Islam or very little about Islam in the Muslim world and that their knowledge there gage Minh twith Islam came primarily through the Iranian Revolution that is a simple fact and so the encounter of the West with Islam is an encounter if you're an American for example of seeing the Shah of Iran who was regarded in America who had come with his wife beyond television he dressed like us talk like us spoke good English was a modernizing Shah I've talked about bringing Iran into the 21st century overnight was on all the talk shows was hosted by Jimmy Carter six months before Iran felt it was unthinkable that that Shah would be overthrown by if you will a bearded mullah Ayatollah the Ayatollah Khomeini who was not only a strange figure that is no one had ever seen an Ayatollah chances are in the US but he also looked like an extremely old man because of his white beard which is one of the reasons I took my beard off after 30 years I once said that to the Ayatollah Khomeini's daughter and she looked at me and said because they showed my passport with this huge beard she said why did you take it off when I told that story and she said the first time I went to Iran after the Revolution I was very nervous she said but I like men with white beard since she was sitting under a picture of her father and I thought my god I'm never going to get out of here I just embarrassed myself and then she just sort of moved her veil aside to show me she was smiling so I could relax but in any case for Americans and as the picture of the Shah that's the picture suddenly of this man he not only ever throws the Shah but overthrows him from where a village in France I mean that's impossible I mean if you think about it logically that that would happen and what was part of that process the taking of American hostages every night Americans who put their TV on and they were told that not just Americans were held hostage America was being held hostage by whom by the Muslims and what did they see every day in the morning or the afternoon when they put on national television people in the streets of Iran yelling death to America well you know if you're the average American sitting there and you see people grab your diplomats and they go on every day you see them on TV yelling death to a matter death to America you don't need much intelligence to say they may mean it you know I mean if I turn to my mother at that time and said guess what I'm going to go and see some of the mosques in Iran my mother might have been just a little nervous about my security so this was the interaction at the same time Ronald Reagan when he came into the presidency alongside the evil empire put what Gadhafi / Khomeini you remember the night that the United States bombed Libya Reagan said why are we doing it it's a Gaddafi terrorism and the worldwide Islamic fundamentalist movement then Dan Quayle the vice president on the bush speaking at the Naval Academy said to the cadets your job is to protect us from being caught off God internationally by international threats like Nazism communism and Islamic fundamentalism and so both in the minds of Americans in the visions that they saw through the headline events on CNN and from their senior political leaders there was the sense that there were 1.2 billion Muslims second largest religion in the world but suddenly now there was this confrontation and scenes from Lebanon of embassies being bombed than people hijacked reinforced that sense of if you will a clash of civilizations the World Trade Center bombing for many had the sense of its being brought home as a result ignorance headline events bury the complexities the diversity of what's going on in the Muslim world and so everything gets seen through the prism of if you will an Islamic threat equated with Iran / Khomeini you can see that no where more clearly than in the 1990s because if in the 1980s the fear was Iran's export of the revolution both in the Middle East and to the wider world or of radical groups such as the group that assassinated Sadat in the 1990s when you have elections and you would think this is going to be fine it's going to show that Islamists participate within the system they are major social forces within society developing institutions they are major political forces the reality of it is that many of the governments in the West like many of the regime's in the Muslim world were even more panicked because now it looked like Islamists were going to come to power through ballots not bullets the inability to deal with the reality of Islam and of Muslim societies what does this mean in terms of the 21st century and relationships between the Muslim world in the West and what does this mean to the Muslims of America and the Muslims in the West in general the first thing is that we are now in a position and at a time as we face the 21st century where the wrong situation has created the right situation what do I mean by that interest in Islam in the Muslim world did not come because people woke up in the 70s had said gee we didn't understand Islam the second largest of the world's religion we're all children of Abraham let's hold hands and learn something more know what it was was we have a geostrategic threat we need to learn more about Islam in the Muslim world but as a result of that coverage of Islam in grammar school in high school in colleges and universities has exploded they were virtually no major colleges and universities where Islam in the Muslim world are not to be found taught in the curriculum coverage of Islam in terms of publications that situation has exploded do a search in your library for books on Islam in the Muslim world before the Iranian Revolution and after it is absolutely remarkable if you want to see a really good example take a look at my CV I finished my degree in 1974 between 74 in 79 I had four articles that was it from 1980 on I have I don't know how many books I don't know how many articles maybe I don't know whatever the numbers are but they're fairly impressive not just because I'm impressive but because in quotes there's a real interest out there but we'd like to think the first is the more important one but there is a real interest I could publish a book every other day and they would be a market for it I could do a video series on Islam in the Muslim world etc etc the interest is there now it came about for the wrong reason but a lot of good returns are actually coming in there is far more of a knowledge of Islam in the Muslim world out there at the same time we still are faced with those who say but in the post-cold war islam represents the second largest religion it provides the only ideological alternative with the you know with the death of communism of the passing of communism and so there's that potential challenge or danger of a clash but at the same time if you look there are a whole generation of scholars and experts and political analysts who take the opposite position and so when you see those who talk about a class you have many others who counter that that situation did not exist ten years ago if you're in Washington they're up there is present in Washington now two schools of thought in general that deal with this issue not just as in my time one school of thought but again where is the challenge who's being challenged what are the responses I want to move to the Muslim community very quickly so I'm just going to make a couple of comments internationally the challenge internationally it's for Muslim countries the vast majority of whose rulers are authoritarian - indeed think about what is best for their people long term and to open up the system it is for Muslim rulers to indeed show that they believe in self-determination but here self-determination for their own people to allow people to participate more politically to allow people to choose the direction of their their societies to allow people to discuss and debate the role of religion in society to avoid using repression as the only means to keep control to develop what I would call the culture and institutions of civil society of an open society much as mr. kata me for example is calling for an Iran today without that one will simply perpetuate authoritarianism whether it's secular or religious the challenge to Western governments is to walk the way they talk that is if Western governments are going to say that they believe in self-determination and democracy then it must be for everyone you can't have a double standard you can't talk about the promotion of democracy in some parts of the world but not in the Middle East and in many parts of the Muslim world the challenge to those who say that they are committed to Islam socially and politically to those who are called Islamic activists or Islamists is to themselves show that they can walk the way they talk if they want to ask for rights under a regime they have to show that when they're in power and in authority they will extend those same rights to others who disagree with them they must show that they too can be self-critical self-critical not only of their excesses but the essence of others committed in the name of a slob so self-determination and self-criticism are in fact what indeed Muslim countries the West Islamic activists and indeed all of us are called in common to share but in fact what most of us tend to do is to compare our ideal to somebody else's reality and that gets in our way we look at somebody else and we see all their faults and we say it's not our fault it's therefore we're beyond that Christianity isn't like that it's what its lom's about Islam is it like that it's what Christianity is about the West isn't like that it's the way Muslims are so each one is calling the other militant each one is calling each other whatever neo-colonialist etc that level of self-criticism is a very difficult thing to move - let me talk about the Muslim community this is what I find to be much more fun one of the things that you will find for those of you who are younger it's the only thing that's that has any value to the idea of getting older you know you're getting older when you suddenly reflect on something and say I remember 20 or 30 years ago the games over once you do that when I Steve people say that I always thought my god that's terrible I hope I never get to that stage now I try to say it was 20 years instead of 30 years 30 years instead of 40 years etc yeah the only thing I brag about is is how long I've been married which is 33 years but anything any anything beyond that is a problem for me to deal with but the reality of it is that when you get to this age you can then say what you like especially if you fly into a city and you know you're leaving the next morning it's like watching you know the the old westerns you come into the town you shoot up and you leave at night the only time it's a problem is if you're going to stay but if you if you people get upset you still know you're gonna leave you're gonna make it back to your hotel hopefully and we won't say what hotel I'm at and then you you head off to whatever airport I'm flying out of I know you know where I have a problem I know this Iranian connection is very dangerous that's what they meant in the introduction you know whenever I go to Iran people somehow expect me to wear a tie now normally I wear it the first time and then I take it off because I always want to announce what I mean around wearing the tie this makes everybody feel happy because they expect an American to wear it on the other hand it's the one thing that's illegal in Iran wearing the tie I mean that's what everybody always loves to say you know well it's illegal to wear a tie but please wear one because people expect you to as a westerner they're not impossible what's the challenge in the 21st century in terms of Muslim Christian understanding especially from the perspective of the Muslim community I have been functioning within the Muslim community for about 30 years because my teachers were Muslim because virtually everybody I studied with in graduate school most of the grad students were Muslim and therefore I in a sense of probably one of the few non Muslim but original members of things like the MSA and a MSS I'm a more Muslim mailing list than one can believe including fundraising mailing lists but the reality of it is that things have changed enormous Lee but the challenge to the Muslim community is are you going to show in the 21st century that they have are you going to show that you're now at a second third stage and in development the Muslim community today has the human and financial resources to make a difference it did not have those resources 30 years ago 20 years ago you did not have the number of Muslims you did not have the number of Muslim professionals you did not have the number of successful Muslims in the professions of educated Muslims etc those human and financial resources are there the question is whether or not that will be harnessed whether or not that will be harnessed so that one functions effectively within the broader Muslim community of the United States and in interaction with the non-muslim community in the United States let me make some general observation observations about Muslim Christian relations the most important thing is that the way in which Muslim Christian relations really moves forward is not to start with what Muslims and Christians share in common religiously but rather what they share in common socially and I've never put it that way before and I'll show you why it's when you encounter the other in the workplace and in school and realize that the other in many ways is very much like me when people encounter each other as neighbors and realize that they share a lot of concerns that they are parents they are concerned about their children they are concerned about their neighborhoods they are concerned about family values they are concerned about education about sex education they are concerned about drugs they are concerned about its when people actually work together side by side that they not only see the differences but they see what they share in common as human beings and they also see a good deal of the values that they share in common then one can move to the next stage if you start simply with the theological part of the problem is a lot of people I know are very devout but they don't really know all that much about their religion you know what I mean they know a lot in terms of their devotion but when they go to engage somebody from another faith to talk they often don't know very much about the person's other faiths let alone about their themselves in terms of that level of sophistication and they get bogged down now but to move to the theological allowing for the differences that that exists between Muslims and Christians and that should exist and should be celebrated the commonalities are staggering the belief in God prophets revelation the belief in family and social values the concerns with secularism materialism etc they are staggering but often our differences get in the way of seeing the commonalities that's one challenge the second challenge is as I said to realize our common experience the third challenge is as I said earlier not to compare our ideal to somebody else's reality we should compare each other in terms of ideals Christian ideals Muslim ideals realities Christian realities Muslim realities then we see our ideals and we see our problems that we share in common otherwise we are to use an American phrase stacking the deck against the other person I'll just talk about my ideals and I'll deal with your reality and so I can always retreat when you say my God look at what Christians have done or whatever that's not really Christianity so that has nothing to do with it rather than saying that may not be Christianity but indeed a lot of Christians engage in that so the ability to talk if we want to appreciate each other about our shared ideals as well as our shared realities in terms of the Muslim community itself what are some observations that can be made to me this is the most important observation both globally and domestically Muslims have to not just reclaim Islam they have to reclaim their self-confidence when Islam spread in the early centuries the reason why it was such a dynamic interactive force in addition to talking about God's guidance in terms of Islam spreading was that Muslims were self-confident they felt that they were in control so when they engaged other cultures and civilizations they could interact and dialogue and borrow freely there wasn't the concern of losing one's identity of being co-opted of being overpowered now it's not to say that Muslims don't have a problem at times in some societies with the issue of being overwhelmed in terms of cultural penetration etc but in many other parts of the world and in many situations Muslims are a lot more established empowered than they allow themselves to be empowerment is very much something that is necessary in self-confidence the danger it's simply repeating the past and remembering the past if you're not careful is that you tend then to live in the past and not say this is what the past was about what can we learn from it thank god were in a position to move beyond it how do we build on that otherwise we're still fighting the battles of the past and we're still feeling that we're not empowered for example when Italian Catholics came to the United States they were a minority religiously and ethnically they were not accepted by the dominant group they could not get into the best schools and universities well my father went for a job in New York it said blacks Jews and Italians need not apply when I was a young man going to a beach in Massachusetts I was told by someone be a little careful because they don't like blacks Puerto Ricans and Italians the community was faced with empowering itself it had to think about how do we as a minority community raise our children in this majority community educate them in a way in which they will not simply be overwhelmed by that majority experience how do we as a disenfranchised minority community move into the positions of if you will power and authority within this society I had a colleague I'd go to lunch with all the time and he would always ask me the same questions we would go not all the time we'd go to lunch every three or four years and he must have had a bad memory every three or four years we would sit down and he'd say to me so John how are you how's your wife and the children and I would say I told you a long time ago that my wife and I decided not to have children Oh so John how was your garden and I'd look at him and say my garden he said well you know your people have Gardens the Italians have Gardens how would the zucchini and I would say we don't have a garden we don't do zucchini and then I would say but I built a patio and he'd say ah because of course Italians are good with cement we build patios and we put people in cement and then I would say no no I didn't build a patio I got you we don't do patios in my family either but you see the image was that we were all trained not to go to university not to move into tapas it you know positions but yes we could we could be laborers but never move beyond being laborers okay that community has empowered itself the Italian Catholic italian-american community Irish American community Polish American community let's take a look at the Muslim community in America the numbers of Muslims in America I'm not even bothered are going to get into I do interviews on this you call up six people you get different statistics but Islam is clearly the third largest religion in Islam in America Muslims are now part of the fabric of society go to any major city go to any town there are mosques all over the place I like to say the problem that the Muslim community has is in some with some communities there are more mosques than there are Muslims which says something about ethnic problems in the Ummah you know but that's an issue that I may get to Muslims are now part and parcel of the professions in the community both my parents have Muslim physicians it's not because they say ah my son goes to the Muslim world he writes on Islam we should have a Muslim physician far from it it's because in New York and New Jersey Muslims are a significant presence in Jersey City there are so many Egyptians that you know in in Arabic you have a soft and then the hard G so you can say JAMA or you can say gamma and the Egyptians refer to it as Jersey City with a hard G I got into a cab in Jersey City and the cab driver had his Koran and I began I didn't know how to engage him to indicate that I knew a little something about Islam so finally I began to recite to shad that and I thought we were gonna have an accident he spun his head around and and and then we began to talk about the number of sort of not only Muslims but you know Egyptian Muslims and and etc in the vicinity so Muslims are very much there they're in our universities they're in our jobs they're in our society but the challenge of the Muslim community is where do you go from here how do you marshal those resources to engage in institution building how do Muslims build with the institution's what I mean by institutions I mean institutions that represent Muslim concerns Muslims need institutions in Washington and nationally the deal with issues like public affairs the media political lobbying etc so that people have a sense of the significance of the number of Muslims otherwise it's as if the Muslim community is in a closet nobody knows they're there if you are visible that's what makes people in Washington listen to you and only that if you are a visible community that's what makes the media respond you call up the media and say I found what you said about Islam offensive I saw Jack last night and I didn't like it they don't care but you let them know that you're a significant number of people than they do care but that kind of monitoring of the media and responding that kind of monitoring of the political system and responding can only come when you build institutions the second thing is to train the next generation to move into the professions that allow for this kind of access and that's happening we see Muslims in the legal profession medical profession but it's going to become more and more important to see Muslims in politics they see Muslims and communications it's going to become more and more important to see Muslims not only studying medicine and engineering but of all things Islam and actually getting degrees I travel around the country I speak to a lot of Muslim communities and I meet with graduate student and I'll just give you two or three stories to give you an idea of some of the problems that community faces I was talking with one group and the graduate student was saying to me in a major city he said the problem we have is with sometimes our parents generation I said what's the problem he said they live in denial I said denial of what they deny that they've been living in America for 30 years and that they're going to die in America and he said that has an impact on us in terms of how we define ourselves as Muslims in America that's one issue the second issue was of a group a young group of Muslim graduate students in which three of them discovered that they shared something in common and it wasn't Islam it was the fact that they were having a tremendous problem with their fathers what was the problem the three of them had switched out of medical school into Islamic studies the fathers who have committed Muslims want their kids to be devout Muslims they want them to be really employed to make big bucks the idea that that kid was going to leave medical school and get a PhD in Islamic studies was beyond them you're going to be a professor dealing with that reality but unless the Muslim community develops that side of itself how can it empower itself will the Muslim community always be looking where overseas for its understanding and interpretation of Islam one of the things I learned early on as a scholar is that there is an Ummah and when Wilson's react to certain international events they react with a sense of commonality but the other thing I learned is that the Ummah also exists but it doesn't exist in this sense I went from one Muslim country where my wife and I were living to another and people said why are you going there this is the best possible place to be I said but you know that's another Muslim country it has but but we set the tone for the Islamic world and in fact our people go there and educate them that kind of little tension that thing can get played out within the American experience and can weaken the Muslim community that's what I meant by communities where you don't just have a kind of inner graded Muslim community which you have and you have many of them here I've seen them on the west coast I've seen them in Toledo I've seen them in many communities but in many others when you land in a city you can identify the mosque so most ethnically you got the Pakistani mosque got the Turkish mosque you've got the now some of the mosques are filled and some of them aren't mobilizing and getting beyond that developing a community that has more cohesion but also developing a community that's not only moving into some of the professions but all of the professions so that when one faces the kind of religious questions that one has to face in terms of the adaptation if you will an encounter of Islam with the American scene you actually have Muslims who not only know their Islam but know America too often you have some who know Islam but don't know America very well who just come over here you have those that know America but don't know Islam very well now don't be offended when I say don't know Islam very well what I mean is that one can know Islam devotionally but not know it in terms of the kind of intellectual resources that one needs for interpretation I like to say that Muslims Jews and Christians have shared an experience as they adapt to America and and even internationally you move into them into modern education and what happens is people get grow up and get an education university level but for many their religious knowledge stays the same level that they had as children you know so they become if you will PhD physicists but their knowledge of Islam is still here in terms of their knowledge of Sharia the knowledge of Islamic history the knowledge of etc and unless one really understands the realities of one's faith in history and it's tremendous the tremendous dynamism of Islam and how that dynamic played out how Islam both preserved its essentials but also was dynamic enough to interact with other cultures to transform them to borrow from them etc one cannot move forward let me bring this talk to a conclusion although somebody told me that after Turkey gave his famous six-day talk I thought that was very interesting I'd like to try that sometime you know I mean that's that was also another example of how Muslims have become excessively Americanized I spoke at a Nissen of meeting years ago there about five thousand Muslims and I get up and I said relax sit back this talk may go 30 minutes at may go three hours people are immediately going like this and I said you know 25 years ago when I went out in the Muslim world to talk nobody was looking like this in fact when I was in Iran recently the Minister of Culture began a conference that I was speaking on Islamic civil society and he said maybe if we're going to have a civil society here one of the first things we should do to be civil is to start on time I've noticed we're not starting anything on time he was commented it seems to me that as the Muslim community defines itself in the 21st century and moves forward the challenge really will be how to harness those resources now I can say that and you can sit there and say we're going to do it let me tell you I travel this country all the time and I talk to Muslim communities and I meet Muslims who really want to see that change in that difference take place and have a commitment but it's one thing to want to do it it's another thing to have the vision to do it and to know how to do it in what Muslims need to do is to develop critical masses of Muslims who are trained to have an impact in different areas that are important to the Muslim community and for those critical masses to actually create a vision and then do something about it and I'll end with my famous comment which gets me into trouble but also which some people like and that is that the problem that many in the Muslim community have had in the last decade is what I call the couch potato syndrome we developed this phrase of the couch potato people who sit and watch sports but don't engage in it so they sit there and get heavier and heavier as they watch football and say my god I love sports you know and and they're sweating this they watch it getting excited and when they were all done and they're sitting there you ever notice how Americans go out and they buy these incredible athletic outfits I might have some of my students come in there isn't a drop of sweat or dirt on it you know and they have you know $200 shoes and these great outfits and then you sit and you watch the sports and you know but you're out of shape when you're watching well the Muslim couch potato is the following because I speak to groups I also do a lot of talks for Muslim fundraisers and watch which I'm doing the talk the non-muslim this is what it is we get together and we talk about the problem of Islam globally and we talk about Palestine we talk about Kashmir we talk about Bosnia we talk about American neocolonialism we talk about the American double standard we talk about Muslim bashing and we are upset and the Muslim community is going to change this and it needs to change and then we break for dinner we have a wonderful dinner it may be Iranian whatever you know and then everybody knows if you make it to dinner huh what happens after dinner you leave within 10 minutes after dinner we all go away say we feel good we identified the problems we showed that we know what they are and we can really get upset about them the more upset you get is the more sincere you are you know but remember what the couch potato can't do and most of you can't do if you don't move the men you can't reach via wallet you can't go for the wallet take out of the wallet what you need to support in order to develop the institutions and do the institution building and that becomes the critical question or you say things like and I and a number of my colleagues get it all the time you get emails and letters dear professors Esposito thank you for speaking out in the media thank you for writing that off that piece you really need to do more dear professor Esposito thank you for creating this Center in Washington which has such and such an impact and you're all over the world I wish you would create a few more positions for Muslim scholars and get the funding for them and I say ah I should go out to Christians and say I need another chair in Islamic studies Christian's come up with the money because Muslims they really want it but somehow they can't get to it no the challenge of the community then is to develop the vision you've got the resources and to support that vision I often say this with regard to communities in Washington there are some good Muslim groups that are doing terrific work I was traveling recently in the Midwest and one of the talks that I gave people asked to have breakfast the next morning some of the Muslim leaders and at breakfast this literally happened one of the people who's a very well-known physician in the Midwest very bright he and I get along really well said you know that group in Washington I love the work that they do but you know I have a little bit of a problem because the leader of that group during the Gulf War took a position that I didn't like I said they're an awful lot of other Muslims that wanted to see another position he said ok he said but there was one other thing we had a conversation once and his interpretation of one of the hadith of the Prophet I had a problem with and so I looked at him and I said how many hadith are there have you ever looked at hadith criticism and interpretation of hadith it's like looking at Tufts ear of the Quran there's more than one interpretation how is any single Muslim going to please you on everything that goes on and so part of the challenge is you know the challenge of Islam to Islam is the challenge to Christians it's the challenge of recognizing diversity within the community that the unity of Islam includes a diversity in Islamic law we call it a falafel the differences that exist among the medaka among the law schools the ability to accept diversity the ability to tolerate diversity not only diversity from religion to religion but within religion is the only thing that can make the community wrong if you don't tolerate diversity then there's no debate there's no discussion and then you have an experience that I've had both within Christianity and Islam and now I will in this is what I call the Christian the radical Christian and radical Muslim alternative years ago I went out to lunch with a young man who was studying in a major university who was a born-again Christian and after lunch he said you know I really enjoyed this can we have lunch again I said sure I said if you don't mind having lunch with somebody that you know is going to help and he looked at me and I said we do believe I'm going to hell don't you he said yeah but I didn't because I'm not born again you know I said you believe your parents are going to hell they have good Lutheran's they raised you they're good Christians etc but they're not born again the way and you love you but he said yeah I love my parents but they're going to hell too unless they're born again I said gee I read the New Testament and boy that's that's an interesting interpretation of Christianity okay second experience I was asked to keynote a conference that in a major I was asked the key I decided not to name the country I was asked to key now because of my friends there I was asked to keen out a major Muslim conference let me just say that overseas a major Muslim conference and so I key noted the conference and after it a very well-known young alum got up who's a very very interesting guy he got up and he praised me that he said the speech was wonderful but watch what was happening the speech was wonderful and professor Esposito what can we say about you me you spend 20 or 30 years explaining Islam you've written these books just just wonder if I could think I wish my mother were here was a month and then the punchline came he said and and we loved it despite the fact that your uncle's far and we know you're going to go to hell we hope you will continue to do this for us and the audience half of them left and the other half looked very nervous and he was speaking he knew his audience and he was deliberately driving at home to a conservative window and he kept going on and he said and he said come on now we have to be honest with professor Esposito we like them we'll invite him back again but we've got to tell them what we exactly think well I will end by saying this it's not just a question of Muslim to Christian the danger that I see at I is that those who call for Islamization some have created a process that I call catherization in their enthusiasm to talk about more Islam if any Muslim disagrees with them their Kufa it you know that cafes that stifles the kind of free discussion and dissent and so you have the irony those who would complain that they cannot discuss their religion in many Muslim countries without certain regimes coming down on them when they're in an open society ready to silence other Muslims who don't speak the way they want to hear them speak and it seems to me that the challenge in terms of Muslim Christian understanding in the 21st century is that both Christians and Muslims have to allow for the kind of open discussion and diversity but the communities have to do it and what does that mean it just doesn't mean pluralism and tolerance it means tolerance as respect not tolerance as I tolerate you because tolerance is I tolerate you can mean tolerance as I have absolutely no respect for you but I won't kill you I mean you know I'll just allow you to it means tolerance as respect that is the challenge it seems to me that is the foundation stone for where we need to go we have to realize that we are community that believe in the same God and that we are a community that has an obligation because it is that God for example in the Quran that said I could have created you as one nation but I chose to create you as many it is that God that talks about people of the book and that should be the theological basis for the kind of vision and for the kind of movement that I think we're all challenged to engage in in the 21st century thank you professor Esposito agreed to answer maybe half an hour questions yeah will do maybe half hour or less oh I know some of you have your favorite television shows I don't want two microphones if you just walk in with a couple of conditions no lectures and be as short as possible notice everybody sit down when you said the first one yeah and before you start I'm gonna use my prerogative and ask you the first question we've been talking for the last two days about couch potatoes my question is if other communities went through the couch potato process and transition and how the Muslim can look into that for that particular type of community yeah I think that it's very very interesting uh one of the things that happens when communities come here it was an experience that I had as a young man I was raised in an Italian neighborhood Italian Catholic neighborhood in Brooklyn and as far as I could walk it was all Italian Catholics it was only when I got older that I began to move into a much more pluralistic setting and indeed I also went to Catholic schools and Catholic college and it was only when I went to Temple University that I really moved into a much more pluralistic setting but I remember as a young man running into situations as I started to move around the country where I ran into people and I suddenly after it would go up to them and say you're Italian you're Catholic and they look around nervously and say yes I'd say but your name and they had changed their name they changed the name to fit in to the community because one fellow said given where I live I sell insurance I could never do it they changed the name some change their religion the in thing used to be become Episcopalian if you really want to make it in America you know I mean I mean seriously you know that was the you know etc so that community faced that situation it will seem ironic to you but the community that I think shares the most with Muslims at one level is the Jewish community when it came because it was a very small minority and it remains of a small minority of the community coming into an overwhelming a society to define yourself not as judeo-christian but as Christian Judeo Christian that term is pretty much a post-world War two term so that before people simply would have described themselves who a Christian as Christian not coming from a judeo-christian tradition and that Jewish community had to figure out how to establish itself and education became the tool one of the primary tools education and institution building if you look at American Jewish the American Jewish community in terms of institution building just the number of American Jewish groups that do fundraising it's phenomenal let alone if you look at the fundraising that they do the amount of money okay that's one number two I can tell you that there are more chairs in Jewish Studies in the United States than there are competent scholars to fill them the community is ready to move into that building the synagogues building schools etc it's that kind of institution building I think one of the problems that Muslim community faces is that many Muslims come from countries where the government built the mosque or a local wealthy family so the idea you know that the government and the institutions were all taken care of you know and the idea that one is going to talk about the kind of support and the kinds of projects that need to be supported it is beyond their comprehension I remember once raising a money for we have it at Georgetown a chair for Islam in Southeast Asia and it was funded by Malaysian businessmen and I remember meeting with one of them and he said to me at one point professor you know you're talking about to 2.5 million dollars that's that's a lot of money and his friend turned to him and said but each of us is being asked to give 500,000 and you would be willing to spend more than that to bring Disneyworld here in other words is a corporate venture and the fellow sort of thought for a second and smiled and said you're right and everything moved quickly forward so I think that the community has other places to learn from but I think the community is also getting to a point where the community is ready to move to do it microphone if you speak to the microphone is better because they can hear you and indeed it was a delightful speech I am very sorry that a certain person called you a cafe but he was a certain person he was not any scholar of international repute and fame but as a student of Oxford London and Cambridge University I had a professor Alexander Hamilton give and he wrote a very famous book Mohammedanism now to us Muslims Muhammad is not the originator of Islam he is not the originator of Mohammedanism and many books in the libraries here public libraries they say Muhammad founded Islam and Islam preacher in fidelity Islam preaches cofrin Caffery says so if intellectuals take up that approach what to speak about a maulvi who called you a kaffir I'm not justifying him another small thing I want to say is that you said at one stage that there are more Moss than Muslims in some towns I thought you said it out of joke it was just an exaggeration thank you with regard to your first point yes with regard to the first point you're right about that problem but I think that you will find that in the last 10 years there are many more scholars and certainly many more I think books that correct that that problem of that perception of Islam but that still remains a challenge it still remains a job but the reverse challenge is there - the challenge for Muslims is to learn about Christi and Judaism I mean there are there are more people in America who study Islam than there are Muslims who study Christianity and if communities are going to understand each other particularly the leadership of communities the ideal is when people can get together and not know not only their own faith but the faith of the person they're talking to thank you for the speech professor my question is on judeo-christian Islamic relations which I don't think you read touched on in that the problem of Israel and Palestine I see that as a stumbling block between American Islamic Christian Islamic relations and so I'm wondering how do you see the stumbling block being overcome yeah I don't I don't think that it's it's a stumbling block at a political level but not necessarily at a religious level it is with certain elements of the religious right but it is certainly not if you look at the statement for example of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on the Middle East given as far back as five and six years ago and indeed there are many groups of Christians and Muslims Christians Muslims and Jews but Christians and Muslims that I happen to know you know who have spoken out quite strongly on issues like Palestine and Jerusalem but at a political level yes I mean I think that the reality of it is for example I mean I often don't say this publicly but you know this video and it is yeah well it isn't publicly right you will all forget what you hear I mean it's not that significant but my Center is called Center of Muslim Christian understanding and that's because of the the people who originally established it what they wanted to do now we do have symbols of all three faiths in the center carved in Bethlehem but some have said why don't you also have Judaism as part of that and part of the answer that I will give is is simply that what we do is what we do just as there are groups that do judeo-christian but also that until Palestine is resolved one cannot talk about this kind of official I think trial log in the kind of effective way in which one would want to so I think that you're right I mean it is it is a stumbling block yes you talked about relationships education being certainly one of the primary ways in which to build those my question simply is you speak that the Jewish community certainly has moved to a certain level where they're now empowering and have empowered themselves AIPAC and groups like that are very well known the Muslim community you feel is getting to that takeoff stage if we can use that terminology what do you see coming in the next perhaps decade give or take if the Muslim community is able to reach that take off stage and successfully empower itself these are the other groups in this in the United States certainly if not worldwide will they be able to unpack the way the media portrays certainly the Muslim community and other communities of religious and ethnic origin and try to reach that dialogue and that understanding on a greater level that you speak about do you think that's possible alright I do I mean I think that you know we already have for example today the the the number of dialogues that go on at lok at local community level you know between communities and among officials but also at the official level you know between the National Conference of Catholic Bishops let's say and Muslim groups there are dialogues being held not only in Washington but in with isne being held in New York you know etc at that level the political empowerment groups it's more difficult one of the things that a Muslim groups seem to share in common is that it's like you know when I was a kid I used to play around a little with magic and you would get like one little rabbit and you would squeeze it and there would be three and four and five that's what Muslim groups do you know you establish a Muslim group in within three months you got two and three not because they're growing from strength but because their argument they break away they and so that's gonna be the challenge also you know that ability to work together the second is and you ask most Muslim groups and most Arab groups this when do they get the funding when there's a crisis you know then the support and the funding and then when it passes things drop off I mean I'm talking about whether I talk to if you will our groups that are non-religious or if I talk to the gosh I'm very good friends the American Muslim council and other groups the funding will go up when there's a crisis that's not community deals from strength strength is that you know that you you do institution-building so that when there's a crisis the institution is there and strong know and I think that that that's part of what what the challenge is professor I enjoyed your talk thank you very much professor your tone has been quite optimistic and there's been very upbeat if you don't mind I'm going to bring a issue that a couple of issues that are let's say they're negative number one in your neck of the woods over in Loudoun County from what I understand recently there is an issue regarding getting a variance for a school for Muslims I don't know if you've heard about it or not you've probably been involved in it it's been resolved they it's been approved one of the people that that was against their against having a school in Loudoun County a pastor I believe yeah he made an interesting point or the point that a lot of people recently make it find it very interesting and that is that you know Christians and those who convert from Islam to Christianity are being persecuted in the Islamic countries and some of them are even put to death now how do you see that kind of relationship outside of United States outside of the West how do you see that that having an effect on the lives of Muslims who live here in United States and as you mentioned they every day they find many many things in common where they with their Christian and Jewish neighbors number one the other thing professor is that how do you see finally the author of the piece of trash the Satanic Verses how do you see that play out in near future hopefully well with regard to the first oh yeah in Loudoun County the the desire was and is to build an Islamic school that would educate some 3,500 students it is being funded solely by Saudi Arabia to the tune of 75 million dollars the the Saudi Academy tried to move into another community to establish itself a couple of years ago and I I wasn't following it a couple of years ago and it was prevented in Loudoun County everything looked fine and then all of a sudden you had a number of people in the community come forward including this pastor who at one point and then he then he mellowed and became at least came up with a kind of rational argument but initially I was called one night and told that there was a pastor who was threatening to turn out four thousand people who would be who was against this and was even you know it's being threatening then later on he said oh no people misunderstood me it's nothing against Islam and he gave this example that that in fact overseas of those a that Christianity at times is not allowed to function or flourish but also that where muslims convert to christianity some are persecuted or killed etc there is no doubt about the fact that those kinds of events overseas you know if you have for example a radical group in the name of islam that goes into a christian town in egypt and burns a church or kills people etc and if that makes the headline events or if a woman is a stone to death in a in a village in in iran and that story is is put in the newspapers and played a certain way that has an impact you know i mean that is people sitting here will say you know this must be what it's all about now there I have two observations number one the role of the Muslim community it seems to me in America is to respond to those things that it sees as Islamic and not Islamic in other words to speak out where it sees religion as being manipulated okay and step forward and do that rather than as sometimes happens not always but sometimes remaining silent okay the second thing is though is that the challenge to many non-muslims in America and in the West is to respond to events in the Muslim world or with in Muslim communities the way it responds to events in the Jewish and Christian community that is if you have a Christian group like David Koresh's group or Jonestown and it commits an event nobody says that's what Christianity is about they say they're a bunch of extremists or nuts who are doing that in the name of Christianity you know if a Jew walks into the mosque in Hebron has happened and does what he does most people don't say that's what mainstream Judaism is about they say that's what a fanatic form of it is music unfortunately often it's changing but often when something would happen in the Muslim world that kind of distinction wouldn't be made you know between an extremist who manipulates religion and commits something and says you know this religion and what the mainstream faith is about that part of the equation I think gets resolved as people come to understand this law more and as as Muslims also are more present in society and speak out more on the issue now let me make it clear if I sound up B it's only because I have a certain philosophy of life which is that the only way you change things is that you change things the only way that you change things is that you have a vision of change and that you pursue it it doesn't mean you're going to achieve all that you wish to change if I sound upbeat it's because I have seen changes in the last 25 or 30 years things have gotten better at one level it doesn't mean that they're great and I can tell you that if you sit in my seat in my office in Washington I deal with the garbage side of it regularly but the media does call the media does ask 10 to 15 years ago they would just print I can tell you right now that a major international network called me about two weeks ago how they found me I was at my mother's house they found me and they called solely for the reason of framing that issue remember there was a report that a number of radical groups had come together and called for the killing of Americans and Westerners overseas under Ben Laden's leadership etc this is whole thing this major communications after call me up and said we want to understand this story better so that we can frame how we're going to respond both tomorrow in the next few weeks that never would have happened before on the other hand you have a lot of other stuff out there that's still a problem and I can tell you that CNN but but even with the times realize okay who's also making the problem it's not just the New York Times it's the fanatics that are saying it you don't even it's the extremists that is saying it and that plays into what the problem with the media is on the Loudoun County that has been resolved a and B I can tell you that the Washington Post is doing a major Sunday story on it I don't know what it looked like so I can't think you know sots ability but I can tell you that that reporter is spending weeks not only I mean he called me up not only to interview me he asked me to give him the names of Muslims all over the place Newsweek and US News and World Report are going to have cover stories on Islam in America and I know for a fact they have gone out of their way to interview Muslims all over the place including Mukhtar joke on five minutes ago my question I thanked first thank you very much for your informative speech you mentioned that historically there has been cooperation between Muslims and Christianity and Judaism in like ten centuries back and so it gives me the impression that at the beginning there was good relationship that lasted for several centuries and suddenly something happened that brought animosity or something that is naturally to think of it is artificial I would appreciate if you shed some light on that and in the light of this question it comes to a second question which is because we don't want to live in the past as you mentioned we it addresses the situation in today you know you mentioned that Muslims have good relationship with neighbors you know they are engineers doctors professionals serve the society and you see there is a kind of animosity that is something not natural that faces Muslims against Christianity that is not a natural mechanism within the two religions I would appreciate if you shed some light on that an artificial that artificial mechanism of animosity and in the light of the answering to these questions could you elaborate on when you know these differences disappear hopefully by mutual cooperation what benefits Muslims would bring to Western societies I think that let's lest I be misunderstood in the early centuries there was both conflict and cooperation not one or the other there was both conflict and cooperation and I think that exists today conflict end cooperation what I'm talking about is where we have to go in terms of moving on in the future and it seems to me that part of the challenge for example of non-muslims in America is to realize as I said earlier that Muslims are us that Muslims are second third and fourth generation that Muslims are Americans the challenge to some in the Muslim community is to figure out how they want to define being Muslim in America that is it's not just a question of living in America it's living with others in America it's not just a question of being here it's a question of of the width how do Muslims participate in the political system how do Muslims not only preserve that sense of identity and community but also interact with their neighbors as neighbors not just in the workplace but in the neighborhood yeah I have hold on a second I have to just make it a procedural point here we only have about maybe about four minutes and I'm hold on please I'm gonna give the chance the ladies to ask that that's two questions if you don't mind I'll make a very brief you spoke that the American the image of the American Muslims has been influenced largely by events outside the United States or beyond the United States is there any such image of American Muslims within the Muslim world is there are there any expectations of American Muslims in the numerous countries that you've visited yeah it's a very interesting and ambivalent kind of thing in some Muslim countries I go to in some Muslim communities people sort of some people worry and say you know my god they're going to lose their Islam they're going to lose their Islamic identity you know in America in others no matter where I go now I'm always asked even though I don't go there to lecture or to talk on Muslims in America I'm always asked to speak about Muslims in America and answer questions they wonder those that don't know what's happening here are Muslims growing and thriving as a faith are they accepted are they not accepted to what extent to events in the Muslim world impact on the way they are the way American Muslims are perceived here I think all of those things you know play out yeah yeah I really appreciated your speech tonight and I'm very happy that being a Christian you have been able to bring up the main problem that we have here about having messed it's all separated because of nationalities that took a Christian to have to bring it up to us because we've tried and we haven't succeeded also I wanted to know that when you speak to Christian groups do you ever suggest to them to read Quran to learn about it so they can see really what Islam is about not what they perceive from the people we had a meeting about a year ago with a rabbi a priest and a Muslim leader and the priest informed us that Catholics did not know about our Quran because of ignorance and we know as a fact that the Vatican really doesn't want our Quran to be out there too much because it's not beneficial to them do you ever suggest for them to just sit down and read our Quran and see what similarity it has to all of the revelations that God has sent to us and to see that you know we're not just something from outer space that we're something that's real and it's just the completion of what God sent to man I mean what I would point out to many in the audience is that the vast majority of people in the United States who study Islam and study Quran are probably not Muslim so that that's a beginning point I mean the fact is they're an awful lot of people out there of Christian and Jewish backgrounds who choose to take courses and study it one of the great ironies is that Muslims can be very much like other ethnic groups and other other groups African Americans and Italians and Hispanics they will on campus insist on having Hispanic studies or Italian studies or whatever and want professors but the students from that very background will often not be the kids who wind up taking the courses so number one that does go up does go on in classrooms number two to be quite frank the way I suggest that people approach Islam is to first read a little bit about Islam and to read the Quran then with that if they just pick up the Quran given the way most people read the Bible Adam time to get into this but structurally the Quran as you know is not laid out from cover to cover we go this way as the Bible would be and so people can actually be initially very confused and it can not be beneficial for some if they have a little bit of background so that they then know what they're moving to and looking for then I find they can engage the Quran a much better this isn't true for all people but I think it's true for many I have one question from one of the sisters in the back she's how can we ask Muslim women fight off the racism and Prejudice that we face every day regarding our head jobs well that's a that's a really tough one I think though that Muslims are faced facing it here both here and in Canada I mean there have been as you know if you if you look at messages from care and other places where this discrimination takes place there was increasingly response to it the situation here is a heck of a lot better than it is in France in terms of the hijab and it's better than it is in Turkey in terms of their job I think the way in which it occurs I think the way in which it occurs is that Muslim women have to continue to wear the hijab and to be able to stand up for their rights much as I make this as only as an analogy and I always tell my students my analogies are terrible but much as women of my generation and women like my wife's wife had to establish themselves in a society that was willing to have problems with their presence in the society and how they functioned and I think the hijab is something the people as Muslims become more prevalent they will simply get used to my God if we can get used to we're seeing all these crazy kids walking around with baseball hats and males with earrings sorry to all the males with earrings but having had long hair and worn B beads I thought that was normal wearing an earring I can't get used to so I can denounce that but I think I think that the scene is changing we see more and more women wearing hijabs and as we see more and more women wearing the jobs will become justit to it thank you very much one more question okay earlier you come in that the American awareness of Islam came about during the time of the Ayatollah I wanted to come in ask you the question do you basically discredit the grassroot movement of the african-americans as to as a contributing factor to the spread of Islam after Mary absolutely do you really think that's what I what I believe do you really think that's what I believe well you said the awareness came about basically the awareness Americans he went out about Islam the awareness came the awareness came clearly let me be really flat-out about the awareness came at a national level it came from the Iranian Revolution at local level it came from an engagement with the Nation of Islam but that engagement of the early period of the Nation of Islam simply reinforced the negative image because in fact as you know in the early period of the Nation of Islam it was a an Islam that was presented an Islam that was divided along racial lines that was exclusive etc and so but the Nation of Islam was not experienced throughout America in the same way that the Iranian Revolution was it was that was experienced as a domestic situation and and for many Americans they never extrapolated because I happen to be in graduate school when the Nation of Islam was very visible they never extrapolated from that and and made big connections with the Islam that was out there in the broader Muslim world I don't I don't at all take away from the contribution or the role that african-american Islam has played in terms of the development of Islam but I understand that point but we the transitions was made and wearable over that's right of 75 yeah and it was a grassroot movement that really contributed to this I read the fourth edition of my book Islam the straight path sorry read the third edition there is no fourth edition so in order that the guys would not get upset maybe thank you very much I've read your Islamic your Islamic threat myth or reality and it would have been more appropriate to ask rabbi america honey but i prefer because you're here i'm gonna be asking you you you exposed how the average american was exposed to islam here i would like you to comment on when somebody of the notoriety of dr. Henry Kissinger on TV alive with Ted Koppel that couple says now I can rest this was in the aftermath of the Gulf War now I can rest we have pushed Iraq a hundred years back thank you you know it's like when people used to ask me to explain Ronald Reagan's policy so you know why the United States bombed Libya I didn't do it I think that I mean to put it to put it as bluntly as I can and because this is being videoed I can't use the language that I used to use to describe both Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-assad years ago but anybody who knows the track record of both of those rulers at least in Hafez al-assad's younger years he may have mellowed in his older years a bit and certainly Saddam's years these are not people that you would want to sit down and have a meal with and expect to be able to hold your meal down and the problem is therefore that for many people the way in which the Gulf War was constructed okay was seen in terms of Saddam in other words just as Saddam rather brilliantly in order to mobilize popular support did not appeal to his personality and his track record but appealed to the issues that were of concern to Muslims in a way a reverse thing happened with regard to Iraq the reaction with regard to Iraq was to see Iraq in terms of the leader and indeed that's the way in which many people approached countries most Americans approach Libya in terms of Gaddafi you know they approached Iran in terms of you know the leader becomes the symbol and Saddam and Saddam you know that the person and the kinds of things Saddam said became the symbol and the hardest thing as you know in terms of turning around policy towards Iraq is to get people to distinguish between Saddam and the Iraqi people and therefore with regard to the American response or whatever response is made to distinguish between the impact of that and who's it really going to affect this there's no doubt about it if you're talking about Henry Kissinger's response well how would I explain a lot of Henry Kissinger's response you know I mean mr. Kissinger is a man who is who is brilliant but one of the lessons you learn is that just because people are brilliant doesn't mean that they're right you know as everyone knows that there's more similarity between Islam and Judaism and then here God comes and introduces to Christianity right in between those two religions and then there's some fundamental issues that are real contradiction like the concept of turning the other cheek and then you know in Judaism you know I four and I and the concept of fasting with Judaism and then Jesus come is not what you put in your body but is what you know you have to clean your mind not your body that doesn't that's not important and then Islam comes again and to preach us about fasting this has made me confused a little bit I think that the only way in which you can really get at that is that you've really got to look at these traditions and study them comparatively fasting exists in all three traditions right particularly it's very strong in brands of Christianity I mean the certainly the Catholicism I was raised in like pork you know Christians eat pork no I mean cook but Christianity had very very strong periods with regard to periods of fasting so I think that there I think that the kinds of similarities and differences you're talking about while in some cases something exists in one faith and not in the other often it does actually exist in more than one faith but we just it depends on which group in that faith you know one talks to all right I commend you how to on how to get us to move forward but if we take on the action that you're suggesting which is go through these political action committees and go to the lobbying process and so on and so forth it seems like a long term effort in order to get to the stage that of democracy and democracy as we know it here wiped out the state of Palestine democracy was implemented in Algeria it we see what happened there genocide and same thing now a turkey and I don't want to wait another 50 years to sit here and make an impact in the United States and I am born here and I was a Catholic to make an impact here in the United States just to watch my family be wiped out let me let me but there is a question behind that I want what I want to know is when you went to these other countries like Iran and so on and so forth what did those leaders tell you on how to propagate islam here and how to institutionalize islamic infrastructure here let me say that number one what was being cited as problems are indeed major problems but they are not the product of democracy they are the product of politics and of the fact that in a democratic system you elect leaders and those leaders can make decisions democracy itself doesn't do that that's number one number two when it comes to Palestine let me tell you a little story I got into a taxicab in San Francisco and I knew the cab driver was Arab didn't know whether he was Muslim didn't know whether he was Palestinian at the time but we drove and he didn't say much and we got talking and then somehow I said something not quite this I didn't say something like and speaking of Palestine what do you think but I somehow got him going when I remember so so tellingly was what he said to me as he pulled into the airport and he said as a Palestinian he said the people who have let us down and not just the Americans and the Israelis but other Arabs in particular and those are the ones that I'm the most upset upset with okay and and other Muslim so the reality of it is that indeed the United States and Europe have a role to play with regard to Palestine a role to play with regard to Bosnia rolled to Algeria but but there have been other players with regard to Algeria who was doing it to whom Algerian Muslims doing it to Algerian Muslims and I've been very outspoken on Algeria and Muslims in the area not having a problem with it the Tunisian government in fact plays along with it so part of the reality that we're dealing with is that we're not only dealing with American foreign policy and European foreign policy we're dealing with the dynamics within the region itself and I think that this is very much an issue and unfortunately it's the subject of another another lecture but part of the difficulty today in the 21st century if we're going to talk about civilizational dialogue the civilizational dialogue is one in which often it is some of the governments in the region that are are those who speak in the most militant ways to Western governments and basically say to them not only our threat but your threat are the fundamentalist and so look the other way when there's repression in Algeria or Tunisia or in Egypt and I think that it's it's a far more complex kind of situation I don't think democracy is the problem there because I'd like to put that word aside and just say political participation from my point of view is not a problem political participation means that people have a voice the real question becomes how the dynamics of the politics within that country play out and frankly as most of you know if you're talking about US policy on to certain countries it's often formed by leaders in a situation in which the vast majority of the population know very little you ask the average American about Algeria even ask them what's going on in Algerian if they understand it you know they don't know so I mean this is really a kind of issue that goes beyond democracy thanks to those of you that came and and at stake you

Channel: Islam On Demand

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Keywords: John, Esposito, Georgetown, Islamic, Studies, Democracy, America, West, Islam, Muslim, Christian, Relations, Islaam, Moslem, Qur'an, Koran, Religion, USA, MeccaCentric

Id: lMNomGd4-Co

Length: 100min 54sec (6054 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 05 2011