Given the importance that the World Affairs Council places on a global education, it was a real delight last night to welcome Ambassador Akbar Ahmed to address the Council’s members and guests. As the former Pakistani ambassador to the UK and current Ibn Khaldun chair of Islamic Studies at American University, it is quite appropriate that he is regarded by the BBC as the ‘world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam.’ Ambassador Ahmed and his young cadre of American college students have recently completed a mammoth undertaking, a year-long ‘Journey in to America’. Visiting over 75 Muslim communities and over 100 mosques, he sought to arrive at a more thorough understanding of how Muslims are perceived across the country. Out of his experiences he and his staff have compiled a book and put together a film, a documentary that we were privileged enough to watch snippets of during his presentation.
Ambassador Ahmed conceded that he was somewhat dismayed by their findings. About half of the non-Muslim Americans they surveyed admitted to varying degrees of anti-Islamic sentiment, the other half professed neutral or indifferent stances. Nearly everybody they spoke to said they really knew next to nothing of Islam. In acknowledging that he had encountered a similar ignorance of America when travelling in the Arab World, Ambassador Ahmed feels it is a terrific failure of both the East and West that we continue to misunderstand each other so completely. It was for this reason that Ambassador Ahmed was particularly kind in his praise of the World Affairs Council’s efforts to defend the value of a global education. He said that he remained very much indebted to the various World Affairs Council chapters across the country for their support on his travels.
During his travels Ambassador Ahmed thought about what he calls the United States’ great conundrums, primary amongst these issues is its relationship with the Muslim World. Are we to treat the Muslim World with respect and honor, or are we to continue down this path of seemingly unending conflict? Perhaps even more significantly to what extent is America able to remain faithful to its own lofty ideals? Ambassador Ahmed was particularly struck at the University of Virginia by the statue of Thomas Jefferson. It is a statue that celebrates Jefferson’s upholding of freedom of conscience, and emblazoned on a tablet under Jefferson’s arm are the names of Jehovah, Rama, and Allah. America was founded as a country of unparalleled tolerance, and even in an era of minimal Islamic exposure in the US, Jefferson maintained the Hindu and Muslim gods’ right to be worshipped. Citing the example of a mosque in Columbia, Tennessee that was burned down by a ‘Christian Identity Movement’, Ambassador Ahmed queried as to whether America can be America?
The Ambassador and his team endeavored to document the manner in which the Muslim minority adjusts to the non-Muslim majority. Their thousands of pages of notes, observations and diaries have been condensed into a ‘Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam’. As an anthropologist’s account, Ambassador Ahmed’s book exists more as a record of what they found than as political commentary. It is impossible, Ambassador Ahmed noted, however, to accurately study one community without examining its relations with other groups. Consequently his book is as much an international relations book as it is a travel record and an anthropologist’s tome. Given his highly impressive credentials one would have been almost disappointed had Ambassador/Professor/Dr. Ahmed not added a few observations of his own, and indeed he checks his objectivity at the door for the last chapter. For America has, by his own admission, been very good to him, and Ambassador Ahmed feels that his recommendations on how to confront homegrown terrorism constitute his contribution to America.