The Pitfalls of Steamrolling the Muslim World
Two of the students that traveled with Akbar Ahmed during his Journey into Islam have written a working paper expanding on the material in the book. Frankie Martin and Hailey Woldt address the current crisis in Waziristan and suggest a new way forward for the United States and the Muslim world.
Akbar Ahmed’s new play on religious tolerance
Author Akbar Ahmed has penned a new play on contemporary Islam. “Noor” is the story of three Muslim brothers who try to rescue their kidnapped sister. The brothers represent the three models of Islam—fundamentalist, mystical, and modernist—that Ahmed identifies and explores in his book Journey into Islam.
Show times for staged readings of “Noor” are November 19 and 20 at 8 p.m. in the Abramson Family Recital Hall at American University’s Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC. Discussions on contemporary Islam will follow the readings. Panelists for the discussion include Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan ambassador to the United States; John Chane, bishop of Washington at the National Cathedral; Tony Blankley, syndicated columnist and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation; Matt Frei, anchor, BBC America; Nora Boustany, Washington Post columnist, and Leon Harris, host of ABC-7’s Capital Sunday. Ari Roth, Artistic Director of Theater J, will moderate the discussion.
For more information on “Noor,” which the Washington Post hails as “a paean to religious tolerance,” go to http://www.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=114947
Author Akbar Ahmed keeps a busy schedule promoting his book in the U.S.
Renowned Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed continues to garner attention for his recently published Journey into Islam. On July 25, he spoke at the Chautauqua Institution in New York, and his speech is now available as a podcast. His July 28 appearance at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, DC, was a great success. Dr. Ahmed, as well as three of the four students who accompanied him on the journey chronicled in the book, addressed a crowd of over 200 people. He answered questions from the audience and stayed afterward to autograph books. The event is now available for viewing on FORA.tv. Ahmed, his student research assistants, and Journey into Islam were also featured in the August 2 International Herald Tribune.
Dr. Ahmed is certain to remain busy in the coming days. He will appear on PBS’s “Tavis Smiley Show” August 16. On August 20, he will be interviewed by Milt Rosenberg on Chicago’s WGN Radio program “Extension 720”. He will also be a guest on WNYC Radio’s “Leonard Lopate Show” in New York City on August 22.
Internationally renowned Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed triumphantly returns from successful U.K. tour, continues promoting book in U.S.
We are delighted to welcome Akbar Ahmed, author of Journey into Islam, back from the U.K. leg of his book tour. During his time in jolly ole’ England, Dr. Ahmed was honored with a launch party at the House of Lords, spoke at the London School of Economics, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liverpool, and met with U.S. Ambassador Robert Tuttle. He also appeared on a number of TV and radio programs including CNN, Fox News, BBC’s The World and Reporting Religion, and BBC Radio 4’s Today and Start the Week. Reviews of the book and coverage of the trip appeared in The Guardian and on Education.Guardian.co.uk, The Independent, The Sunday Times, and The Liverpool Daily Post.
Dr. Ahmed’s schedule shows no sign of letting up now that he is back in the States. He has authored an opinion piece for the Washington Post "Outlook" and will participate in “Muslims Speak Out,” a weeklong dialogue between Muslim clerics and scholars about religion, terrorism, and human rights sponsored by the Washington Post/Newsweek blog, On Faith, and Georgetown University. His play, Noor, will debut on Thursday, July 26 at 6 p.m. during the Capital Fringe Festival. On Saturday, July 28 at 6 p.m. he will appear at Politics and Prose bookstore. He has even been invited to appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (date to be determined).
- Learn more about Journey into Islam.
- Learn more about Akbar Ahmed’s event at Politics and Prose.
Presidential Contenders Talk about Religion at the Sojourners Presidential Forum
On June 4, Sojourners hosted three leading contenders for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination—John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton—for the first-ever candidates’ forum on faith and values. In this forum, which illustrated the potential role that religion could play in the 2008 race, the candidates spoke with remarkable frankness as a panel of religious leaders questioned their personal experiences with religion and the effect of faith on their political views.
The discussion touched on a number of religious themes. When asked about the greatest sin he has committed, Edwards replied, “If I have had a day in my 54 years where I haven't sinned multiple times, I would be amazed.” Senator Obama spoke of people’s “mutual responsibilities” that “have to express themselves, not just through our churches, and our synagogues, and our mosques, and our temples, not only in our own families, but they have to express themselves through our government.” Senator Clinton responded to questions about infidelity in her marriage by saying, “I had a grounding in faith that gave me the courage and the strength to do what I thought was right, regardless of what the world thought.”
After the 2004 presidential election, many analysts argued that the election had been decided along religious lines, pointing to exit polls, strong turnout among evangelicals, and controversy over gay marriage. In A Matter of Faith, editor David E. Campbell and additional contributors assess the role religion played in the 2004 election and explore its significance for future contests. While we have yet to see the extent of religion’s impact on the 2008 election, this book suggests that religion has the potential to wield a powerful influence. Surely yesterday’s forum was just the beginning.
Why the West Must Journey Into Islam
The U.S. military has recently recognized the culture gap between the West and the Muslim world as detrimental to the War on Terror. In fact, it now requires cultural training classes for officers in the region (See CSMonitor.com, “What US wants in its troops: culture savvy”) in order to prepare them for the cultural traditions and practices they will encounter.
In this month’s AARP The Magazine (“Talking Can Stop Hate”), Brookings author Akbar Ahmed argues for a broader cultural understanding between the two regions. He urges that, “For the United States, understanding Muslims is not a luxury. It is an imperative.” Ahmed believes that tensions between Western nations and the Muslim world would diminish through dialogue and understanding, and this awareness could pave the road for the two cultures to coexist peacefully and respectfully.
Ahmed bases his opinions on a recent journey into the three major regions of the Muslim world: the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia, and his meetings with a diverse group of people, ranging from students and sheiks to the President of Pakistan. The goal of his trip, he says, was “to change opinions and to better understand Muslim culture—and to show a side of the United States that Muslims rarely see.” As he elaborates in his newest book, Journey Into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization, Ahmed sought to understand the experiences and perceptions of ordinary Muslims, particularly regarding the West and globalization. While he did find high levels of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism and a widespread perception that Islam is under attack from the West, he also brought back reason to hope for a lasting peace between Islam and the West.
Brookings Receives Top Billing in WSJ List of Essential Books on Understanding Islam
Vartan Gregorian's Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith (Brookings, 2003) gets top billing in Karen Elliott House's opinion piece in the November 11, 2006 edition of The Wall Street Journal entitled "Sense of Ummah." House calls Islam "the perfect primer....simple, but not simplistic" in her listing of books essential to understanding Islam.
Upon publication, Publishers Weekly noted that "Gregorian reminds readers that it is unfair to generalize so wantonly about a religion that encompasses more than a billion people. This book is brief, but its scope is ambitious...." CHOICE called Islam "An exceptionally readable, panoramic view of the Islamic world."
Three years after publication this book hasn't waned in importance or scope. Gregorian urges Westerners to distinguish between activist Islamist parties, which promote—sometimes violently—Islam as an ideology in a theocratic state, and Islamic parties, whose traditional members want their secular political systems to co-exist with the moral principles of their religion. By doing so, he calls on us to promote international understanding, tolerance, and peace.
Authors of New Brookings Book Say "Yes" and "No"
The bitterness of the 2006 midterm elections seems to demonstrate the increasingly polarized nature of American politics. Phrases such as “Religious Right” and the “Liberal Media,” have been used to characterize today’s political players. But the authors of a new Brookings volume say it is debatable whether the country is so clearly and bitterly divided. Is There a Culture War? A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life (Brookings, 2006), written by two leading political analysts, James Davison Hunter, executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, and Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, brings together the scholars for the first time to clarify their political philosophies and to search for the truth about America’s cultural condition.
