Mutual Misperceptions

Your works convey a very strong sense of the way that we misperceive the Islamic world. I thought I'd begin talking about your work by asking you when a Muslim thinks about the West, what does he see? Just the typical Muslim. I feel that we don't have a sense of their perception of us.

The Muslim world can be as diverse as when we talk about the Western world -- [like] the difference that we see today between France and America. But in general, whether sophisticated or unsophisticated, educated or less than well-educated, many Muslims have a sense of, on the one hand, admiring America. That's why so many have come here, or want to come here. They come to study, they come to live, they buy property, etc. But even though that's the case, there is a sense among many Muslims who feel close to America (let alone extremists), that there's been a long history of rivalry. There's a strong memory of a militant Christianity, the Crusades, and of European colonialism, and, more recently, a sense that in general, as great as America is in terms of its principles, when it comes to its foreign policy and its application in the Muslim world, a double standard is seen.

The most generic observation is that many simply believe that despite the number of Muslims and their visibility across the world, and now in Europe and America, Islam still tends to be a misunderstood religion, often seen through caricatures or through the headline events that focus on the acts of extremists.

And on the other side, what stands out in the way we misperceive the Islamic world?

We often fail to see the diversity. We know that [we encompass] a diversity; when Muslim say "the West" we will say, "Wait a minute, there's a difference between Europe and America." Or when they say "the West and Christianity," we will say, "This is isn't Christendom any longer."

We tend not to see the diversity of the Muslim world. Over the years, until recently, we tended to continually equate Islam with Arabs, when they constitute only 23 percent of the Muslims. In the past, when we talked about, for example, women, we always had images of women in Saudi Arabia; we talked about the fact that they can't drive cars, or that there is sexual segregation, or that they have to be completely covered in public. book cover We often equate that with the reality, let's say, of Muslims in Egypt or Muslims in Indonesia and Malaysia.

But the other thing is that we tend to equate the minority of extremists, who are in fact out there and are dangerous, with the majority religion. When an extremist Jew assassinates a prime minister of Israel, or an extremist Christian commits an action, in our gut as Americans we distinguish that from mainstream Judaism and Christianity. The average person doesn't say, "There go those Christians and Jews again." And we use the word "extremist" meaning "veering from the norm." When Muslim extremists do it, that distinction doesn't occur. Even when we use the word "extremist," we don't really necessarily mean that they're extremists relative to the [Muslim] norm. Of course, that perception gets reinforced by certain voices in the Christian right -- Franklin Graham, and [Pat] Robertson -- who, in fact, don't make the distinction themselves. They don't say "extremists are evil." They say, "Islam is evil." I think that that post - 9/11, it's become exacerbated exponentially.

Is it ignorance that is the root cause here, or that the part is taken for the whole?

It's ignorance and reality. It's ignorance of the diversity of the whole. But it's also the impact of reality. The fact is that if you don't know a lot about a people, you are going to generalize about them from the realities that you see. Most Americans engage Islam with the Iranian Revolution and the Americans held hostage, and with extremist events after that -- the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and, certainly, the impact of 9/11. And that makes it that much more difficult.

When we created the Center for Muslim - Christian Understanding in 1993, we were to address these issues. At our last meeting, one of the people on my board said, "It's phenomenal what you've achieved in the first eight or nine years. But, regrettably, 9/11 has put us back twenty years."

What should the average American know about Islam? What are its central tenets as a religion that we don't look at in the context of these misperceptions?

There are two things. One is an awareness that there is, in fact, not just the Judeo-Christian, but a Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. That's what got me interested in Islam. I had studied Christianity; I had studied Judaism. I had studied Hinduism and Buddhism. And when I studied Islam, I thought that I was going to be studying the religion that was "over there." Because in those days, in graduate school, and even in undergrad, you talked about Judaism and Christianity, and then you put Islam with Hinduism and Buddhism. Suddenly, I discovered a religion that, in fact, recognized the revelation of the Torah and the New Testament; recognized Moses and Jesus; traced itself back to the patriarch, Abraham, and back to the "one true God"; shared a vision of moral accountability, human responsibility; had a vision of God, human beings, angels, devils, judgment, etc. That was beyond what I could appreciate.

The second thing is for Americans to realize the similarity, in many ways, in emphasis of Islam and Judaism. Islam and Judaism, in contrast to Christianity, emphasized religious observance. You talk about an observant Jew, an observant Muslim, more than dogma or doctrine. In Islam, recognizing the Five Pillars and what they call upon a Muslim to believe in -- absolute monotheism, belief in God, prophecy, and revelation; prayer five times a day; fasting; pilgrimage; paying the tithe to support those that are poor -- all of that is there, along with dealing with the issues of violence, radicalism, and extremism.

Why do you think, as a social scientist, this was such a sudden awakening for you? It suggests that the work had not been done to see these kinds of comparisons before you came along. Why do you think that was the case?

There were a number of things operating. The history, the encounter of Christians and Muslims, while there were many points of cooperation, there were many points of conflict, and a long process of demonization -- it's reflected in Dante's Inferno, for example. Ironically, Dante borrowed from Muslim writings, but in the end, he put Muhammad in the lowest of the hells. There was at the points of conflict of almost mutual Satanization, and there was a lack of any real appreciation from a scholarly point of view, and full knowledge of Islam. We knew a lot more, not only about Judaism and Christianity, but Hinduism and Buddhism. And this was clearly the case in America.

In America, the study of eastern religions came in during the sixties and seventies. But the last religion often to be studied, or the last faculty members to be hired in those early days, were in Islam. The interest tended to be in Hinduism, Buddhism -- Zen Buddhism. We had a tendency in terms of our own religion and culture to say, "We are Jews and Christians, and the rest are over there." And immediately that implies that Islam shares an awful lot with Hinduism and Buddhism, and not that much with Judaism and Christianity.

Next page: "Clash of Civilizations"