Peace Be With You

Islamic Life in the United States

By Kevin Hyde

The United States is the richest country in the world, “but we don’t invest in dialogue,” claims Riffat Hassan, a University of Louisville humanities professor. She is trying to help remedy that by directing a unique exchange program designed to facilitate discourse and understanding between foreign Muslims and Americans.

Funded by a $343,785 U.S. Department of State grant, U of L’s Islamic Life in the United States Program recently brought 14 Islamic teachers, scholars and religious leaders to the United States from parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.

“The task ahead of us is not an easy one—to promote a culture of knowledge and harmony and to build bridges in a highly polarized world in which negative stereotypes and images of both sides abound,” Hassan said shortly before the visitors arrived at the university in early April.

Riffat Hassan and Muhammad Ali during a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Muhammad Ali Center in April.

Throughout that month—as hearings on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were televised and escalating violence in Iraq pervaded the news—the Muslim guests interacted with U of L faculty and students as well as teachers and students from several other schools in the Louisville area. They discussed diversity, democracy, religion and culture. They also attended social events and participated in academic, interfaith and cultural programs, many organized by the grant program’s numerous partners.

Among the latter was a roundtable discussion on fighting religious stereotypes, one of three major events sponsored by the Muhammad Ali Center in conjunction with the visiting scholars. During the event, Muhammad Ali himself made an appeal for acceptance, patience and tolerance.

“Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams—they all are unique but they all contain water, just as religions all contain truth,” the champ wrote in a statement read by Michael Fox, the Ali Center’s president.

America’s most famous Muslim, Ali was well known to the foreign visitors. Several said they had followed his career ever since he first became world heavyweight-boxing champion and converted to Islam in 1964. Ali is the “most qualified representative of the Muslim world in the latter half of the 20th century,” Pakastani historian Sharif-Al-Mujahid said in an interview.

“His very presence signifies the importance of what we are doing,” Hassan added.

The Muslims also traveled to several other cities during their visit, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Washington, D.C. While the Islamic Life in the United States Program gave the visitors an opportunity to learn about American culture, it also gave them an opportunity to educate Americans on mainstream Islam and Muslims.

“Islam is a religion of peace,” said A.N.M Wahidur Rahman, a philosophy professor from Chittagong, Bangladesh. “Terrorism and extremism is not allowed in Islam.”

Those sentiments were repeated often during a dialogue at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville. The discussion centered on two questions that go to the core of the exchange program: What do foreign Muslims want American Christians to know? What do American Christians want foreign Muslims to know?

Kazi Nurul Islam, a world religions professor at Dhaka University in Bangladesh, gave a spirited lecture on common misconceptions about the Islamic religion.

“Islam is the most misunderstood religion in the world,” he insisted.

“It is a progressive, forgiving religion. Unfortunately there are a lot of differences between the actions of Muslims and the teaching of Islam. I’m sure that’s the case in all religions.”

Islam told his Presbyterian hosts that the Koran insists that Muslims respect all the prophets including Jesus or they “cease to be a Muslim,” he said. “These are the things that our brothers and sisters in the West must know.”

Islam also talked about democracy and the status of women in the Muslim world. His native Bangladesh, which has a population of more than 133 million, currently has a parliamentary democracy with broad powers exercised by its female prime minister, Begum Khaleda Zia.

“If women are so mistreated, how do we have a woman prime minister in one of the largest Muslim countries in the world?” Islam asked.

U of L’s Hassan also mentioned several other misconceptions about Islam that are widely held by Westerners, including issues such as freedom of religion, which “is unambiguously favored in the Koran,” she said, and the question of who gets to paradise. Just Muslims? While there is disagreement, many Muslims believe that “anybody who believes in God and lives their life righteously will have their reward,” she noted.

In addition their discussions grappled with why many in the Muslim world believe the United States is a Christian theocracy and that President George W. Bush speaks for all of Christianity. The scholars also dealt with the difficult and ambiguous word jihad.

Bringing the Message Home

Speaking on the eve of her return home, Rukhsana Nikhat Lari, an Arabic literature professor at Lucknow University in India, said that she was impressed by the American families she interacted with during the trip.

“From the media we have information that there is no family life in America,” Lari said.

Lari is also an authority on Islamic personal law and works with organizations to help resolve family disputes concerning married Muslim women in India. She said she observed U.S. families with much the same concerns as those in India and elsewhere.

“We are all one family,” she said. “[The American families] were so friendly and heard us so patiently. They feel like us on a humanitarian basis. All of them want peace. That is the main thing.”

Lari added that she was looking forward to sharing her visit with her students in Lucknow. Some have built grudges based on misperceptions, she said. But she predicted that they will listen to her views.

Abdul Rauf, an Afghan khateeb (prayer leader and scholar) for a mosque in Kabul, said he has thousands of followers in his country. Many of them warned him not to travel to America.

“During our one month we learned a lot of positive things,” he said through a translator. “I will tell my followers. I will hope in the future that the propaganda will not continue.”

Rauf said he wished others could experience the “surprising kindness” that the visitors enjoyed. He joked that if his children were not back home he would want to stay.

“This is the real America that we saw,” he said. “In all my life I never saw this kindness. I hope Americans don’t forget us.

“We will always remember this.”

Rauf added that he learned two highly useful English phrases during his stay: “How are you?” and “I am fine.”

Several scholars who visited in April found themselves in the host role in mid July when nine U.S. scholars went to south Asia. The group—which included a retired Presbyterian minister, a retired U of L English professor, several current U of L faculty members, an attorney, a student intern and the founder and president of Teachers Without Borders—participated in a variety of events with Muslims in places including Islamabad and Lahore in Pakistan; Delhi, India; and Dhaka, Bangladesh. They ended the trip in Mumbai, India.

Later in the program, a group from Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen is expected to visit. In return scholars from the United States will then go to some of those countries.

An Extraordinarily Good Proposal

Muhammad Hanif Jallandhari, principal of an Islamic university in Pakistan, was one of the 14 Muslim scholars who visited the United States in April as part of a U of L program. (Photo by Tom Fougerousse)

U of L was the only school in the nation to receive the State Department grant to set up the Islamic Life in the United States Program. Originally to be distributed to several institutions, the grant was developed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks carried out by terrorists claiming to act in the name of Islam. The State Department was so impressed by the application submitted by Hassan and her colleagues that it changed its original plans and gave all of the funds to U of L, according to Thomas Johnston, senior exchange specialist for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the State Department.

“It was an extraordinarily good proposal that clearly understood what we were looking for,” Johnston says.

The program is part of U of L’s Commonwealth Center for the Humanities and Society. English professor Tom Byers, the center’s director, said it is the most meaningful project the university could undertake.

“The bridges that we hope to build together and the understandings that we hope to share are the best hope for a future of peace for all of our nations and all of our children,” he explains.

In his letter of support for the program, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell wrote, “One of our best weapons against radicalism and extremist hatred of the United States is fostering greater understanding and appreciation of the multiethnic, multicultural religious pluralism that helps to make American democracy so strong.”

U of L President James Ramsey says the program represents everything the university tries to focus on—cultivating “a broad understanding of diversity and openness and inclusiveness.”

(Editor’s Note: Judy Hughes contributed to this story.)

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