Zaytuna Commencement 2018: Keynote Address by Dr. Garry Wills

[Applause] my dear brothers and sisters under the one god it is generous of you to invite me here to share your time of proud achievement you have mastered two cultures to advance the prosperity of both and foster greater understanding between fellow creatures and our shared God the unsung heroes of most ceremonies like this are the parents they are the ones who first taught the graduates and have supported and encouraged and inspired them through years that was certainly true of my parents neither of them had gone to college but they were very pleased that I was able to do that and go on to graduate school and go on to teach it was as if they had done it themselves and in a sense they had I come here out of a certain degree of shame it was shame that made me belatedly study and come to love the Quran despite a lifetime of studying religion I was ashamed that I had not read the Quran until the claims that it was responsible for the tragedy of 9/11 made me start investigating such hateful charges as I came to know more about Islam I also felt shame as an American that a man who is now the president of the United States would mock and humiliate the parents of an American war hero who died for this country captain who my own con whom I ins father kids recon who has a law degree from Harvard tried to instruct Donald Trump on the Constitution only to have Trump insult his wife and call him a puppet of Hillary Clinton such ignorance is alas not uncommon but as is not normally rewarded with the presidency I'm I am also ashamed for this country whose boast has been that it supports freedom of religion and yet it sees actions to prevent the building of mosques or to encourage the desecration of them this despite the fact that the Quran says that believers in the one God should protect one another's places of worship including I quote monasteries churches synagogues and mosques you graduates have completed today an important stage in a project that is vital to our country to increase the understanding of the role Islam should play in American life fulfilling the First Amendment's pledge of religious freedom you understand what his recon was trying to teach that recalcitrant student to Donald Trump you are trained not only in Muslim scholarship but in the liberal arts whose aim is to know the whole culture of the human mind many years ago when I was a young the liberal arts were somewhat restricted in their range they referred especially to the Greek and Roman cultures and to Europeans who boasted that they were transmitting these classics the high school I went to offered its students four years of Latin and two years of Greek the Greek language appealed to me so much that I went on to study it throughout college and throughout graduate school and I taught Greek for some years as a faculty member but it took me a while to realize that the humanities were not as exclusively European as I had first been taught during the Dark Ages in Europe the writings of Aristotle the great Greek philosopher had been entirely lost in the West but they were preserved studied and commented on in the Muslim world he was not until the 13th century that Western thinkers like Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas retrieved Aristotle from great Muslim thinkers like Avicenna and Avera Wiis who had been experts in that subject for a year for centuries before the West even became aware of them the revelations were so new to Europeans that they tried to reject them as an alien intrusion in 1277 the University of Paris the principal center of theological study at the time the place where thomas aquinas had been a teacher condemned Aquinas is teaching saying have made him more an Aristotelian than a Christian just think what a shrunken sense and their own asked the teachers in Paris would have bequeathed to us if that condemnation of the new information had been retained and deepened now we know that the humanities the liberal arts include the study of many cultures after all humans are humans wherever they live and if one believes in one God he is the maker and protector of them all Allah and the Quran says that he sends messages to all people all the time speaking to them in their own languages there were some Americans who objected when the first Muslim was elected to the United States Congress and took his oath of office not on the Bible but on the Koran few of them realized that the Quran keith Ellison placed his hands on was the very personal copy that had been owned by Thomas Jefferson it is now in the Library of Congress which led it to congressman Ellison for his swearing in Jefferson it turns out was far ahead of me in knowing that we should be interested in all the religions of all men the importance of this to him was such that he listed his Virginia statute of religious freedom among the three things he wanted to be remembered for the only things to be inscribed on his tombstone they were the Declaration of Independence the statute of religious freedom in the founding of the University of Virginia he wanted those things listed and quote not a word more close quote Jefferson in his autobiography describes his aim in the statute of religious freedom it was quote to comprehend within its mantle of protection the Jew and the Gentile the Christian and the the Hindu and the infidel of every denomination close quote Jefferson with his curiosity about all things probably knew that as many as 20% of the slaves brought to America from Africa were Muslims the Jeffersonian principle of religious freedom was recognized in the white house during the presidencies of Bill Clinton George Bush W Bush and Barack Obama in all of which Ramadan was celebrated along with Passover and Easter this official recognition of our major religions is another American tradition President Trump does not recognize the three presidents I mentioned all visited the Washington area mosque during their presidency and when he was there President Obama said prompting laughter Thomas Jefferson's opponents tried to stir up things by suggesting he was a Muslim so I was not the first you graduates have great things to contribute to our expanding culture and some ugly prejudices to contradict with by your accomplishments this day part of your obligation is to study our other religious traditions as you hope that Americans become better acquainted with the Quran we should assure each other that it is never too late to broaden our understanding of each other how can we communicate with each other unless we know and respect each other I came late to the Quran and I had been striving energetically to bring my fellow Christians to know it and learn from it I hope you will give significant effort to promoting the study of the Jewish Torah and the Christian gospel in that same spirit we cannot thrive as religious communities unless we welcome and promote a public discussion of our shared values and respected differences you graduates let me say at the end here are upholding the most authentic traditions of this nation if anyone ever has the nerve to ask if you are really Americans you have every right to answer was Thomas Jefferson an American [Applause] you

Channel: Zaytuna College

Views: 56,849

Keywords: zaytuna college, islam, muslim, quran, liberal arts, interfaith, jewish, christian, bible, thomas jefferson, garry wills

Id: DLdy6r-cUNE

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Mon May 21 2018