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Daily Times – April 27, 2004
Islamic scholars hold lively discussions
in United States
By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON: The 18 South Asia scholars, including three Afghan khatibs, spent a busy morning at the American University exchanging ideas with some members of the faculty on the need to remove misunderstandings that exist about Islam and to promote inter-faith harmony.
The project, sponsored by the State Department, was conceived by eminent Islamic scholar Dr Riffat Hassan from the University of Kentucky at Louisville. She is also the director of ‘Islamic life in the US,’ the name given to the project.
Dr Hassan, who is professor of humanities and religious studies, said the four-week intensive program for the scholars from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan was designed to make the visitors aware of how Islamic studies were taught in this country and how American Muslims lived. She said the task ahead was not an easy one as it involved promoting 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.
Addressing the group Monday (4/26/4), Dr Abu Nimar of the American University’s School of International Service, said the 9/11 attacks had triggered interest in Islam and the Middle East. In the process, both Islam and Muslims had been stereotyped and misperceived. Lost in that, he pointed out, was the fact that Islam was a religion rooted in peace and reconciliation.
Prof. Abdul Aziz Said of Islamic Peace at the American University’s School of International Service, said the last century was one of total war, but it was hoped that the new century would be one not of Pax Americana or Pax Islamica but Pax Universalism, or what Ibne Arabi called “wahdat al-wajood” by which he meant the brotherhood of man or universalism. He said the peace chair at the university, the first one in the United States, was created with an endowment from Mohammed Said Farsi, a Saudi Arabian citizen, who felt that Islam’s image should be correctly projected and its association with peace and harmony emphasized.
Dr Riffat Hassan, in remarks to the group, said while the Islamist extremists had given the world the impression that Islam was a narrow-minded and bigoted religion, a number of NGOs funded by Western donors were at pains to establish that Islam and human rights were incompatible. The tragedy was that 95 percent of Muslims were left to occupy the “middle space” because they agreed with neither the former nor the latter. It was this overwhelming majority that needed to be approached and heard. She said Western countries were keen to “reform” the madrassas, but what needed reform and modernization were the mainstream schools.
Prof Sharif-ul-Mujahid, founder and director of the Quaid-e-Azam Academy, Karachi, said the Muslims were “past oriented”, their thinking confined to the “horizontal plane.” Their understanding of religion was “tradition laden” whereas they had to face contemporary reality and be equipped to deal with it. They were always on the defensive and unwilling to grapple with the issues of today.
Kazi Nurul Islam, head of the department of world religions at Dhaka University, Bangladesh, pointed out that Muslim scholars were not interested in studying other religions and were generally ignorant about them. He suggested that the study of other faiths should be introduced in educational institutions to increase understanding of other religions and to promote inter-faith harmony. He said the majority of Muslims thought that their familiarity with references made in the Quran to other prophets was enough by way of gaining an understanding of religions other than Islam, when it was not so at all.
Nigerian lawyer Ms Hauwa Ibrahim, who was the defense counsel of Amina Lawal who was sentenced to death by stoning by a Nigerian Shari’a court, told the group that Americans did not really understand the world beyond their country’s borders. She noted that only eight percent of Americans had traveled outside the United States, adding “They don’t know our world.” She went on to suggest that Islam needs to “open up” and the double standards that many of the religion’s adherents maintain have to be given up. She said in Muslim societies it was not the rule of law but “the law of rules” that had ascendancy. She said, “Our understanding of our religion is rooted in ritual. We memorise sacred texts that we do not even understand, living as we are in the back pages of history. What Muslim societies need is rule of law.”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_28-4-2004_pg7_38
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