C-SPAN video of this event can be found here.
Transcript:
SUHAIL KHAN:
Thanks, Assad. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for coming out this morning on this very important topic. And Assad very ably laid out the issues here. The controversy surrounding the Park 51 Community Center in lower Manhattan has really sparked a national debate on a host of issues beyond just the construction of the community center in lower Manhattan. And a lot of the questions that a lot of folks have been asking themselves have kind of come to the national conversation, including what is the role of Islam in America? Who are American Muslims? What do they want? What are their aspirations and goals? And some of the even more tougher questions have begun to really surface, including what is the role of terrorism? Is there a relationship to terrorism in Islam? Are Muslims inherently violent? These are some of the questions that were asked in the Time Magazine article from two weeks ago. And then even other questions related to the role of women in Islam. And I’ve seen even now what was on the fringe, perhaps just in, you know, in chat rooms and on the internet, has now kind of surfaced and bubbled up, as Assad said, to mainstream conversation, to the point where mainstream politicians are now accusing Muslims of somehow being a fifth column, somehow not being capable of being loyal as Americans. They might have inherent conflicts in their faith as far as their loyalties and there are all kinds of accusations that are swirling around. So what we thought here is that we would assemble a panel of experts who could really take on some of these myths, challenge some of these myths, and really shed light on some of these issues that have come up.
So what I thought I’d do is go ahead and introduce the panel. And they will each speak for a brief ten to fifteen minutes and then we can go right to the Q and A, so we can have a real good conversation about some of the issues that are on people’s minds. And before we go with that, I just want to remind folks since we are live on–being taped here–that if we could turn off cell phones and pagers, that we won’t have any interruptions, that that would be helpful. But I’ll introduce our panelists, if I could. Our first panelist, I’ll go in order, is Salam al-Maryati [PH]. Salam is the president of MPAC, the Muslim Public Affairs Council. They have offices all over the country, including here in Washington, D.C. and in Los Angeles. Salam has been a champion for issues related to the Muslim-American community for over two decades. And he resides in Los Angeles with his wife, but he’s a fixture here in Washington, D.C. as well in public policy forums, working with the executive branch as well as on Capitol Hill. And he will discuss issues related to just basic overview of the role of Muslims. Their life in the United States, challenges. Are they in any way unique or different than every other day Americans? And then next up, we have Professor Azizah al-Hibri [PH], who is the professor of law at the University of Richmond Law School. She’s also the founder and chairman of Karamah [PH], a Muslim women’s advocacy organization. And she will be especially able to address issues related to Islam and the law. We have a lot of questions in the mix related to sharia. And questions related to sharia.
I always say that, you know, sharia is like when you’re a kid and you kind of learn a dirty word and you keep going on wanting to repeat it. About five or six years ago, the word related to Islam that a lot of people wanted to repeat was the word Wahabiism. And you heard that all the time. Everybody was a Wahhabi. I had to look it up when I was accused of being a Wahhabi. And now the new dirty word is sharia. And I thought Professor al-Hibri [PH] could address some of the issues and some of the questions related to sharia. What exactly that is and do Muslims in fact want to impose sharia upon everybody else? And last up, our speaker is Dr. Jim Zogby, the founder and president of the Arab American Institute, who really has been a pioneer. If Salam’s been working for twenty years, Jim’s been working for over thirty in the trenches, really trying to empower Americans of all backgrounds and faiths, but particularly in the Arab-American community. He’s unique in that he’s Arab-American, but also Irish, also Catholic. So he’s seen this movie before as it were. And I thought he might be able to provide a historical context to some of the challenges were facing right now. But with that, let me start with Salam and we’ll proceed down.
SALAM al-MARYATI:
Thank you and good morning. Well, I’m going to be talking about the Muslim-American community and Islam, but I’m going to try and tie it into the Park 51 controversy. Because I know there are a lot of questions that arise from that issue. And first and foremost is this–the nomenclature of this particular controversy. It started out as the Ground Zero mosque controversy. And I think by now everybody acknowledges that the place is not at Ground Zero and it is not a mosque. It is a few blocks away where you can’t even see Ground Zero and it is a community center that was actually intended to develop interfaith understanding. And I think that’s important because a lot of Muslim-American institutions now are doing exactly that. They’re reaching out to their fellow neighbors, to Christians and Jews, in their local communities, and developing interfaith understanding and tackling issues such as poverty, homelessness, any kind of injustice. And trying to develop better dialogue among the three Abrahamic faiths. As Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are all rooted in Abraham as really the father of these three great religions. But the fact is that it was called the Ground Zero mosque and that obviously caused a lot of consternation and here we have to distinguish between truth and fact. The truth is, it’s not on Ground Zero, it’s not a mosque. It’s a community center. And the fact is, it was called that, so as you repeat the facts, it becomes reality. And we have to deal with these realities. Now, moving away from this controversy, you see demonstrations against mosques and Muslims throughout the country. And I think the one issue that we have to be very concerned about as Americans is the burn of–Burning the Koran Day–on 9-11. In particular–particularly, in Gainesville, Florida. Where there will be a reverend, a religious, Christian religious leader, who will sponsor Burning the Koran Day. And this is a, obviously, a major issue for us.
But as Muslims, we have told our congregations, told Muslim-Americans, ignore that. Keep doing your good work, because this is what the Koran tells us to do. But as Americans, we should be very concerned about that. Because, first and foremost, I think people need to understand that–what is the Koran? The Koran basically is a–what Muslims consider a revelation from God. Just as Jesus is the Word of God, that Muslims believe in. Muhammad was given this revelation that was basically compiled into the Koran today. And within the Koran, there are stories about Abraham, about Ishmael, Isaac, and Jacob. About Moses and the children of Israel. We read during Ramadan the Koran quite extensively about the struggle of the children of Israel against the pharaohs. And against the tyranny and the injustice there and how they were liberated. We read about Jesus and his mother, Mary. So really the Biblical prophets are also Islam’s prophets. And I don’t think many Americans are aware of that. And we take responsibility as Muslims of not presenting that kind of information to people. So we have, as a result, this Burning the Koran Day and what we are telling Muslims–number one, to ignore. And number two, if somebody’s burning anything in your neighborhood, the first thing you do is call the fire department, because that’s a fire hazard. But obviously, the images of that cause even greater problems for us as Americans, cause could you imagine now in Afghanistan and Iraq, images of Americans burning the Koran. How now that is propaganda and recruiting material for al-Qaeda and other violent extremists.
And here is an important point for us to make now–that anti-Muslim sentiment in America is basically a mirror of anti-American sentiment on the global arena. So as anti-Muslim sentiment spikes here in America, then you can expect a spike in anti-America sentiment abroad. And now we see several counter-terrorism experts talking about how this is really undermining our efforts throughout the world and putting more Americans in harm’s way. And I think this issue of Islamophobia, then, has to be viewed as an American problem, not just as a Muslim problem. Now, Pew has conducted a study that says seventy percent of the American public has either an unfavorable view or no opinion on Islam. And here I think the problem is, is that the extremists are able to tell their stories more effectively than the Muslim-American community can tell its story. Cause the Muslim-American story still has not been told, in terms of who we are, what we represent, how we want to contribute to American society. Yet, if some guy in some cave in a faraway place decides to make a video that curses America, that talks about bombing innocent lives, anywhere in any part of the world, if it’s bin-Laden or somebody from Shavat [PH] in Somalia, if that tape is made, then within minutes, instantaneously, you get that video played over and over again in all U.S. markets. Yet, if we, as Muslim-Americans, which we have done so many times, talking about our efforts–and we have a paper for you today called “Building Bridges”–in terms of partnership in developing America’s national security, we continue to do that work. We’ve had several condemnations of terrorism throughout the years, even before 9-11, that story is still not told. But in the broader sense, and let me just end with two points, there is a problem between religious nationalism and religious pluralism. Religious nationalism–when a few–small group of people–exploit religion using its popularity to serve selfish interests of a few and create violence, anarchy, chaos, and they exploit religion then religion becomes something without justice. Religion without justice, then, is exploitation. They want God to serve them. They do not serve God.
Religious pluralism, on the other hand, is that we have the belief in one God and therefore, we believe in the one human family. And to believe in one God means that you have to support human equality, whether people believe in God or don’t believe in God. Human equality is critical to the notion of the belief in one God. Therefore, God’s will is one of racial and religious diversity. The Koran says to each of you we have made from among you different laws–and here the word sharia comes, sharata [PH]–and different ways. And the Koran says therefore, don’t worry about your differences. Just compete for doing good work. And this diversity is very important for Muslims to understand as well as for us to explain to other people. And then, very briefly, in terms of sharia–I know that Azizah al-Hibri, Professor Azizah al-Hibri will talk more extensively about that–sharia simply means the road or the way or the path to God. It’s a general term. But one person made an important statement about sharia, well-known in Islamic history. His name is Ibn ad-Khayyam al-Jezeya [PH] who was a student of Ibn Tamiya [PH]. And he says, when there is no justice, there is no sharia. So if we’re talking about the sharia of what we see in the Middle East, when there is bias against women, when there is oppression and violence against the weak and vulnerable communities, that is not sharia to us. And that is not what we want here in America, definitely. We will be the first to stand up in opposition to that kind of exploitation of Islam. And another great scholar says, where there is no security, there’s no Islam. Where there is security, that is where Islam is. And therefore, America, to us, is the best place for Muslims and we will work to preserve our Constitutional rights for all Americans. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]
AZIZAH al-HIBRI:
Good morning. I really didn’t intend to stand before you and talk about sharia law. That’s put a lot of you to sleep, because I treat it as a very serious legal discipline. I thought I would start today by making a few comments about American law and Muslims in the United States. And feel free to ask about any questions of concern to you about sharia law. I am more than happy to answer those. But I got very much interested in the Founding Fathers a while back. And I went to Monticello and I went to other places and looked in their papers and looked in the Library of Congress letters and so on. And I found a lot of interesting stuff along the way, not only as far as the Founding Fathers, but the whole mood of the country in those days. And I was very surprised to find out, for example, that on the literary level, there were plays written about attempts to liberate Muslim women who are oppressed in the East. You know, the talk about the harem and things like that. I found out that there were all sorts of suspicions expressed about Muslims. I also found out, by the way, that there was an attempt at regime change by the United States in Tripoli, North Africa, in the 18th Century.
I found out that there were writings that Jefferson was aware of which called Islam a false religion and the prophet an imposter. A lot of this has happened for awhile. It didn’t just happen yesterday. And I think it’s time that we take a deep breath and talk to each other as co-citizens and ask ourselves, how are we going to relate to each other? And what’s the foundation of this historical misunderstanding? I do not want us to push anything under the rug. Let’s have an honest and healthy discussion in a country which believes in the process of law in a country of laws and country of due process. This is what protects all of us. It’s not just about an Islamic minority or a Muslim minority. It’s about all minorities. It’s also about the conscience of the majority. Another big shock that I developed as I was reading the history of this country–I walked along off the campus of my university through the Historical Baptist Society and, lo and behold, I found out their leaders in their own time suffered quite a bit. And in fact, they’re not the only group that has suffered. Jews, Catholics, and I can name a lot of other minorities that have had it difficult getting stabilized in this country. So I guess, you know, we all go through this. But hopefully, as we mature in terms of our understanding of our Constitution, the process will become more dignified and less painful. So I want Muslims in this country to understand in some way they must think of that. Everybody else had to go through this one way or the other. The other thing is–and I’m talking to Muslims as well–is that, thankfully, the Founding Fathers had introduced, through the insistence of a lot of religious groups who were Christian, and atheists, by the way, and other religions, the First Amendment. Which has its origins in the Bill of Rights of Virginia. And I’m happy to say that since I teach in Virginia and I’m really proud of that fact.
So, what I’m asking for is a double request. One is reassert our commitment to the First Amendment. Throughout history, it has shown that it is a very valuable part of what the U.S. is about. And, in fact, I think this is one of the major attractions of the U.S. To immigrants who leave their countries, they love their countries and leave them, because they truly believe that in this country they can have a free and dignified being that they have missed elsewhere. The Supreme Court, throughout the years, has again elaborated and emphasized the basic principles of the First Amendment. For example, in Lynch versus Donnelly, Chief Justice Rehnquist emphasizes that political divisiveness alone, he stated cannot serve to invalidate otherwise permissible conduct. So whatever we might feel about the person sitting next to us, they have rights. Even if we politically disagree, that’s no reason to behave in a way that would infringe on those rights. And, furthermore, the First Amendment states–well, it doesn’t state, but implies–that the legislative powers of the government could reach actions only and not opinions. And so it’s wonderful that we could all sit here and I’m sure we–some of us would disagree on certain aspects of the discussion–but we are protected by the First Amendment in doing that. One wonders about the situation that has arisen recently with all sorts of broad misstatements and misinformation about Islam that Salam has referred to. And I’m sure others will talk about later today. But I’d like to point out that that misinformation does not only come from non-Muslims, it also comes from Muslims. That many Muslims themselves are misinformed about their religion. And that I feel that a major part of my responsibility in this country is to educate Muslims about what the Koran really says. For example, since I’m a woman, and I’m committed to women’s issues and women’s dignity and liberation, I–we at my organization, Karamah, runs classes in which we teach Muslim women and hopefully, in the future, men, about the rights that are guaranteed to them by their own religion. What is surprising about all this is that most of the women we teach are surprised that they have all these rights.
So there is a stereotype, a very negative stereotype about Islam that goes around. And it goes around even within the Muslim community. Because they don’t see it as negative. They have misinformation about Islam. But they don’t understand that this holy book, this Koran, has basically the principles of the First Amendment in it. But historically, Muslim communities have practiced religious tolerance. This is nothing new. It did not start with the United States. It started many hundred years ago. It might not be–have been as good, as perfectly practiced as–and it’s not so perfect yet in the United States–but certainly, it was done. And it was done in a historical era when nobody else practiced it. So when Islam was tolerant and welcomed diversity and use it to develop societies as opposed to fight progress, you know, if Islam did that, how come we forgot all these important achievements and instead we went to an authoritarian structure, a patriarchal understanding, and an understanding that has caused a lot of pain–not only for us in this country, but elsewhere? My message today is that we really need a serious conversation about Islam. And by that, I also include the Muslims. In this country and elsewhere. We need a serious conversation, not based on the demagoguery of somebody or another telling us what they think Islam is. But on a serious study of the texts of the Koran which shows, for example, that democracy is at the heart of Islam. Through the concept of shura, which is consultative approach. Through the separation of powers. Through the election of head of state. None of this we see today in Muslim countries. Which is why I think Salam said that he feels this is a most congenial country to be in for Muslims, because it represents more of the principles of Islam that we believe in. So if we are going to talk a little bit about Islamic law, I would mention one verse in the Koran, which is paraphrased by Jefferson–without reference to the Koran–so it could be that they just both, you know, that Jefferson thought of it on his own–but you all know that he did own a Koran and I suppose if he owned it, he read it–there’s a verse in the Koran which says there is no compulsion in religion. That’s a freedom of exercise. So that everybody is free to pick what they believe in and he mentions that in his encyclopedia. The Koran also advocates what–what is referred to in the Koran as Kenimatsuwa [PH] which is a fair word or equitable word with other religions. Communication. Even if somebody, the Koran says, talks to you or acts towards you in a way that is hostile, return the bad deed with a good one. So that, ultimately, this person who is unhappy with you or hostile to you will one day become your friend. Cause human beings, I would elaborate, are in the end, good people. And if they understand that you’re not out there to hurt them, and you are friendly, then they’ll come around and talk to you. I’d like to see a serious conversation started in this country. The word sharia law has been bandied around as a threat. I don’t know where this came from. Why is it being discussed in the United States as a threat? Maybe you can enlighten me during the Q and A and I’d be happy to answer. But American Muslims have been living under the American laws for, ever since, you know, they came to this country. Which, by the way, is before the 1600s. A lot of people think that Muslims are recent visitors to this country, or immigrants, which is not true. I would like to end by reading a verse from the Koran, which should guide all our actions, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. It’s chapter fourteen, verses twenty-four, twenty-five. It says a goodly word is like a goodly tree whose roots are firmly fixed and its branches reach up to the heavens. It brings forth its fruits at all times by the leave of the lord. So let us all strive for the good word. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
JAMES ZOGBY:
Good morning. I–my daughter, Mary Margaret, used to tease me, about ten years ago, when I was fifty-five. She’d say, it must be fun being fifty-five, you get to meet new people every day. It was an expression she started using because she introduced me to her friend Kelly one day and a couple of days later, Kelly was over again, and she said you met Kelly. And I said, I don’t think so. And she said, yeah, dad, you did. It was two days ago. I get that feeling when we have this discussion, cause it seems that every time there’s a crisis, we have to start talking again about what is this all about and who are these people and what’s this religion all about. At some point, I think it will begin to dawn on us that there’s something we need to know and ought to pay attention to, but let’s do it one more time. It was shortly after September 11th, I was invited by Bill Clinton to NYU to a panel that he had organized on a topic identical to the one we’re doing today. Americans were in shock, people in New York in particular, and had a lot of questions that they wanted answered. We recognized the importance of doing that and so what we did with this panel was begin to talk about who Muslim-Americans were. What I did before I went to the session is I called a lot of friends to get some anecdotes and sort of poured over my mind in the thirty years I’ve been doing this work and I’ve got a doctorate in Islamic Studies and I’ve organized Arab-Americans for about–as long as I can remember–and have been polling Arab-Americans and American-Muslims and so putting it all together, I told some stories about a young woman who was a pre-med student, an idealist par excellence, who told me one day, she said, I’m not going to be like my father. I want to practice my religion by opening a clinic for the poor. And she said, that would be how I’d practice my faith.
And then there was a guy who I knew in Cincinnati who reminded me so much of my father as he took me to the mosque that he had helped raise the money to build and was so proud of the building and toured me around and showed me he got this from Syria and he had that donated from Lebanon and he brought all these wonderful artifacts and–and, like I said, it reminded me of my father and my uncles who built the Maronite Church in Utica, which incidentally is going to be celebrating a hundredth year anniversary of the parish community–not of the church itself. And that sense that immigrants get from the pride they have in building and sort of establishing their institutions in the New World–he died a couple of years later. But then two years after he died, I had the opportunity to give his son an internship at the White House, and as we walked across Pennsylvania Avenue on his first day of work, the kid teared up and he said, if only my dad could see me now, he’d be so proud. This is why he came to this country. There were other stories. A young Yemeni girl in Dearborn, who, in the middle of Ramadan, there was a fight in the school. It started because the principal insisted that the Muslim students had to go to the cafeteria during lunchtime. The kids asked for the opportunity to go to a study hall. He said no. And so, during the lunch period, kids were throwing ham at the Muslim students and it was, of course, something–a provocation which ultimately turned out to be a fight. This fourteen-year old girl, we had a town meeting, she came to me and she said, I had the solution. I went to the principal and I told him the problem is that we don’t understand each other. And she said, they don’t understand my culture and so if you would help us, maybe we could explain our culture to them. And he snapped back at her, my job is not to have you teach your culture, girl, it’s for you to learn my culture. She continued to fight and she actually does the work that she had set out to do at fourteen today as a full-time professional inter-cultural communication–and there were so many other stories of people who reminded me so much of my own background and the background I’m sure of so many of you here. And that is, people who, like us, are Americans. Who have pride in their faith, pride in their heritage, who share the American dream and who want to succeed, and who value the values of America. It is an American story. It’s a community not unlike other communities. And it’s interesting because the anecdotes tell that story, but our polling does as well. We’ve polled, as I said, not only Arab Muslim-Americans, but we’ve polled ethnic Americans.
We’ve polled Irish and Italian and Polish and we put together a book I did a few years back called Ethnic Americans: What They Really Think, and what we learned about Muslims that was really quite fascinating–first, the diversity of the community is extraordinary. Probably the single largest group is African-American. After that, you have Arab-American. And South Asian-American. But growing numbers of Iranian-Americans and Turkish-Americans and folks from African countries, who again, each one of them, as you meet them, in their communities or on their own, remind you of the immigrant story of every other group that’s come to America. In terms of their values, in terms of their aspirations, in terms of the fact that you get into the cab, you talk to the guy when he’s doing his day job, but he’s got a night job. And he’s got three kids, and he’ll tell you with enormous pride what they’re doing in college. It’s the American story. And like I said, that comes through in the polling that we’ve done. What we learn is, for example, that the values of Muslims in America track closely the values of other ethnic Americans. In particular, Catholics. Like Catholics, they lean progressive on a number of fiscal issues. Like, for example, supporting health care, strengthening social security, or school funding or funding to clean the environment. But then they lean conservative on social issues. Like family values or abortion or tough on crime or–and this might be interesting to you–tough on laws that would fight terrorism. The income of Muslim-Americans is slightly higher than the average, the national average. And mosque attendance is actually about the same as church attendance. And the values of those who are regular mosque attendees track closely with those who are regular church attendees and those who aren’t track closely with those who aren’t regular church attendees. And the belief, as I said, in the American dream, is the same. This is what we know.
And this is the story that we told after 9-11 and it’s the story that we tell again today. President Bush got it completely right. The problem is not Islam. The problem are people who have used Islam to commit violent acts against our country and our people. But what happened after 9-11, when we were all asking these questions, that a cottage industry of those who actually had an axe to grind against the religion of Islam and against Muslims and against Arabs, I believe, in particular, they ended up providing most of the answers. They wrote books and got them published. They testified before Congress and they dominated the airwaves on radio and on television. I’ll never forget a hearing that was held in the Senate on Islam, featuring three guys who, actually if you had the reverse and the three Muslims were testifying on the nature of Judaism in an Arab country, you’d hear whoops and yells, but it was acceptable for this to happen. And the lies they told and the bigotry that they spread was horrific. And yet, people were just nodding in the audience, because that’s all they heard. That’s all, actually, they were in a position to hear. These guys conflated every incident of violence as somehow evidence that they were right. And they’ve done enormous damage. Shortly after 9-11, when we polled overall America what we found is that people still have a very favorable attitude toward Islam. And today when we poll, they do not. Back then, when we polled, three-quarters of Americans said they felt they needed to know more. And they wanted to know more about Islam and about Muslims. And today, less than half say they need to know more. The fact is, that unfavorable views have risen, but bad information has increased as well. So that people think they know and that’s the dangerous thing. I mean, ignorance and certitude are probably the most dangerous combination of all. I mean, you talked about sharia and–I mean, we went into Iraq not having a clue–and yet, a month later, people were talking about Sunni and Shia as if they actually knew what the difference was. And madrassas and wahhabis and salafi and if you could put two words in a sentence you became an expert and you got on television to talk about it. If this weren’t enough, this cast of characters organized not only information campaigns, but they actually organized politically. They were the ones who stopped the Khalil Gibran Academy in New York City. And they are the ones now, the very same cast of characters who are organizing against Park 51. This is the danger. As Salam correctly pointed out, it is a danger to the image of our country abroad. It flies in the face of the wise counsel offered by George W. Bush. It’s a danger to our values, but it is also a danger to the very social fabric of who we are as a country.
A few years back, I was invited to speak in Warsaw and in Prague and other places in Europe to talk about the difference. People wanted to know, what’s the difference between America and Europe. And why are your Muslim and Arab communities not alienated? Why have they risen to the top in your country in ways they have not done so here? I began. And I spoke about the fact that we as a nation have always been different. We’ve been different in the sense that America as a concept is different and America as a reality is different. No ethnic group defines who we are. No religion defines who we are. Bigots have had their way over time, but in the end, ultimately, the notion of America as an absorptive entity that transforms people into Americans–you don’t just get a passport here. You get an identity as a new person. It’s an alchemy that transforms you into becoming Americans. You can be a Kurd in Germany for three generations and you’ll always be a Turk. You can be an Algerian in France for three generations and you’ll always be an Arab. Or you can be Pakistani in London and you’ll always be a Paki. You can get citizenship. It’s an effort. But you never get the nationality. You never get that sense that I’m part of this people. The narrative doesn’t include you. I, as a kid, when we studied Lewis and Clark, I went with them. When Washington crossed the Delaware, I was on the boat. I mean, there was this sense you had that it was your story. It wasn’t somebody else’s story. That’s who we are as a country. And what troubles me is that what is at stake in this Park 51 story is not about a building. And it’s not about a place. It is about the narrative of who we are as a people. And if these guys win, whatever the outcome, but if these guys win, then America won’t be America anymore. And the story of the Muslim community here may very well be like that of the Muslim community in France or in Germany. And that would be devastating for the social fabric of our country. And I will leave it there and I thank you and I hope we don’t have to have this discussion again in this way. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
SUHAIL KHAN:
Thank you, Dr. Zogby. I know we have a lot of questions and before we get to the questions, just a couple of ground rules. First, make sure it’s a question and not a speech. If you want to make a speech, you can do your own panel. [LAUGHTER] And then, for–out of respect to our friends from C-SPAN, they have a boom mike. So they’re going to come around. I know you guys are kind of crammed in here, so they’ll come around and make their best effort to get the mike above so that you can have your question heard to the rest of the country. Let me start off with a quick question, kind of picking up on what Dr. Zogby talked about. And I’ve been getting this question quite a bit, both from friend and the media and that is, post 9-11, we suffered this horrendous, tragic attack. But the country seemed to pull together and while there were incidents of retaliation and some incidents, not only against Muslim-Americans, but people who were perceived to be Muslim-Americans–why is this coming up now, eight, nine years later? Why is there now a call to stop the construction of mosques across the country? There are over two thousand plus mosques in the country. The population has grown. There’s over six to eight million Muslims in the country. Why is this coming to a head now? If you want to answer that, Jim or Salam?
JIM ZOGBY:
There is a general mood afoot in the country. It is part and parcel of the broader social unraveling, I think, that is taking place. We had–we saw it begin last summer. I think some of it has to do with the fact that we have elected an African-American president and some folks just can’t ingest it. There’s no question, I think, that the economic distress and the social dislocation that has occurred is part of it. And I think at the same time that eight or nine years of disinformation has taking a toll. But if the social conditions weren’t there, if this unraveling wasn’t there, I don’t think we’d see it in exactly the same way. It is classic xenophobic nativism. We’ve seen it as speakers mentioned in our history before and we had the anti-Asian backlash in the early part of the last century. Shortly after world–between the two wars, we had the–an anti-Southern European, I mean Italians got lynched and there was a push to deny immigration. Actually, our folks, most of the Southern Europeans were called trash and got zeroed out, because they were anarchists, socialists, whatever threats to America. And so we had the same kind of thing. And then we had the anti-German wave as well. So in periods of economic stress, this begins to happen. It has been fueled, I think, by bigotry and ignorance. But another factor is, is that the president himself is in a bind. I mean, George Bush was able to come and speak out. If Barack Obama comes and speaks out as forcefully, you’ve got–twenty percent of the public thinks he’s Muslim already and holds that against him. And so, in some ways, he’s in a bind. It puts the rest of the country in a bind in that where does leadership come from on this and how can leadership speak forcefully about it? I think it’s a terrible situation. And we do need political leadership instead of fanning the flames as some are doing. We need political leadership to do the right thing and put this out. Because, as I said, I think that the very social fabric of the country’s at stake here.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Salam, do you want to add anything?
SALAM a-MARYATI:
Well, you know, I think I agree with everything Jim has said and I think we’re at a crossroads in our society in terms of what–how we define America. Is America an exclusive club or are we going to live up to the standard–to our value of pluralism? And when people start questioning the Christianity of our president, I think that’s a form of religious nationalism. I think they’re using religion to say even religion, now, within America, is part of an exclusive club. And so this exploitation of the truth that is used also for political purposes, since this is now an election year, coming up to the November elections–and the fact is, Muslim-Americans are the easiest targets. They’re an easy punching bag for this because we don’t have the reach, we don’t have a lobby, we don’t have a PR infrastructure. And so, while we are responding to everything, the other side, obviously, has the microphone. It’s the other side of extremists. And my mentor always said something that is very telling for us as Muslims and for us as Americans, for us as people. He said, the world is not divided into Muslims, Christians, and Jews. The world is divided into stupid people and intelligent people.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Well, on that note, who wants to be the first to ask an intelligent question? [LAUGHTER] Raise your hand and we’ll have the gentlemen with the mike come over. He’s right behind you, Mike [UNCLEAR]
MIKE:
Suhail, you and I have discussed this in the past and that is that while we know that the great majority of Muslims embrace and endorse the founding principles of the United States and want to be good Americans, unfortunately, there are people who don’t. The Nidal Hasans of the world. And who profess to be acting in the name of Islam. And one of the difficulties, it seems to me, is there’s no central authority, there’s no central definition of what a good Muslim is. Is there any effort to–within the Muslim-American community to uphold an America-affirming Islam and reject and marginalize those people who want to kidnap Islam?
SUHAIL KHAN:
Thanks, Mike. Professor?
AZIZAH al-HIBRI:
I think this–I think this call for a centralized figure in American Islam to tell people what Islam is, what’s right and wrong, is misguided. We do not have a pope. And we’re not going to elect one for the United States. We believe in democracy. We believe in structures where people even within Islam and not just outside it would hold different interpretations of Islam so long as they are consistent with the basic principles of the Koran. What we really need is a council of scholars. Not people who call themselves scholars. Especially, not patriarchal scholars. People who really understand what Islamic law is about, have studied it, can think about it and write about it, who will come together and evaluate the various strains in the United States–Muslim strains–and comment on them in writing. That’s why I was calling for an education. I would like it–for example, recently, a lot of people came to me and said that, you know, what about this story of the stoning in Afghanistan, you know, isn’t that applying sharia law? And I thought, oh my god, if that was applying sharia law–and so we sat at my organization, Karamah, and we wrote a multi-page analysis of that in which we showed that, first of all, it’s not an application of sharia law and second of all, that the people who committed that act are themselves punishable because they killed innocent victims. You know, nobody’s talking about that. So what we really need is not central authority. I, as a woman who believes in democracy, will move away from central authority. But ask for order and as for responsibility and for legal authority in the sense of understanding the religion to educate Muslims as well as non-Muslims in the U.S.
SALAM al-MARYATI:
I’d like to add to that. It’s not just an issue of what scholars are saying. But it’s also what people are doing on the ground. I think the strongest frontline against any kind of alienation or isolation of young Muslim Americans, that the work is being done in mosques, in youth associations, in community centers, it’s people that promote civic engagement. It’s people who promote the principles of Islam and, for example, there is no stoning in the Koran. And yet that myth continues to be repeated that we have to respond to, unfortunately, over and over again. I just want to say as far as sharia, it’s the–as we said, the path to God and the principles of sharia are mercy, justice, and human dignity. The goals of sharia are five that are accepted by all the scholars with unanimity. They are the rights to life, free expression, faith, family, and property. So if there’s any violation of those goals, then it is a violation of sharia. So that common understanding among the common Muslim is really the goal that our organization and other Muslim-American organizations are pursuing.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Jim?
JIM ZOGBY:
I’ll take another–another cut at that in a different way. I’m a Catholic. All priests are not pedophiles. I work with Italians. They’re not all tied in with the mob. I’m married to an Irish woman. She doesn’t drink. [LAUGHTER] The–I remember saying after the Christmas Day attempt to blow up that plane in Detroit, that we learned from that that we didn’t connect the dots in our intelligence community correctly. As dangerous as not connecting the dots is to wrongly connect dots and think you’ve come up with a picture. And I think one of the problems that we’ve got is that, as I said in my remarks, they conflated every single incident that has occurred and drawn a portrait of Islam. I–some have chastised me for using the word bigotry. But let’s understand what it is. I mean, bigotry is when you take the characteristics of a few and generalize them into the behavior or attribute that, then, to the whole. So this priest, that priest, that priest, actually, unfortunately, the only stories we ever read about priests these days are that. But the Salam story of the good, hard-working Muslims all over–and yet, we know in our own heart of hearts and in our own experience that the problem is we don’t know Muslims well enough yet. And so, Azizah’s point that we need to have this intelligent conversation, we need more exposure, we need to know more about it, we need to retain what we know, and we need not to connect the dots in a way that is not warranted. And so I think that more than a religious authority, there’s more experience in a change of heart. And that would, I think, be helpful in dealing with this problem more than if you had the Muslim pope say, he is not a Muslim for what he did, you would still have people saying, he’s not authentic, he’s not speaking for it. Nidal Hassan is. You know, and I think that that’s the problem that we have to condemn. I remember one time speaking in New York at a–the first anniversary of 9-11, Tom Brokaw invited me to come speak in the round to families of survivors. And it was a very painful day for them and it was a difficult experience for me. First question was, why did they do it? What justified it? I said, nothing justified it. Period. Absolutely nothing justified it. Next question, why do you say nothing justified it and then say, but? I said, I didn’t say, but. I said, nothing justified it. When are you people going to stop trying to find justification–now, I understood their pain. I understood that their pain had temporarily closed their ears to listening. But the reality is, is that from the rest of America, we didn’t have that direct pain and yet too many still closed their ears and made the judgment that all Muslims thought this way or all Muslims thought that way or all Muslims are inclined to violence and that you need to have Muslims speak out and yet when Salam’s group spoke out and other groups spoke out and repeatedly spoke out, nobody heard them. So–[BACKGROUND VOICE, OFF-MIKE, INAUDIBLE]–yeah–
MIKE:
–responsible Muslims.
JIM ZOGBY:
Yeah.
MIKE:
We need a mechanism by which they can be heard.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Professor, do you have a comment?
AZIZAH al-HIBRI:
I just wanted to point out that while we’re having this wonderful discussion, we don’t even know yet what is–or we don’t agree what is the definition of sharia law. Keep that in the back of your mind. [LAUGHTER]
SUHAIL KHAN:
Next question? In the front?
MAN:
What role do you think the press plays in showing the Muslims in a negative light versus the positive light that’s already in, in terms of stoking, you know, prejudice and stereotype and Islamophobia? I work in the Middle East peace movement with a group of Muslims, Arabs, Jews, Christians, and what I found out is there’s interfaith, multicultural, Middle East peace movements not just in northern Virginia and D.C., they’re in every city across the country, they’re in Israel and Palestine, they’re in Jerusalem. No mention of these organizations in the national media. But the question is, why do you think that’s so? And if it is so, how can we change that so–for example, I’m Jewish, but I’m not a billionaire. But if you look at the press, all Jewish people are–we’re all rich. And this stereotyping goes on with African-Americans, with lots of different minorities. But how do we change these images so that America changes as the images change?
SALAM al-MARYATI:
Well, just two points on that. Just wanted to–quick–speak to two issues. Number one, the nature of the media, they only cover what’s a conflict. So moderation and bridge-building is not newsworthy. It doesn’t make the news when we get ten thousand people in Chicago at our annual convention, for example, or in Los Angeles. And we bring governments and all sorts of civic leaders and we talk about how we as Americans of all different faith backgrounds are working together for justice. Are working together against any kind of extremists. Are working together for peace and security for the people in the Middle East. It just doesn’t make news. So unless there is a conflict–and usually, the story–if you look at the stories about Muslims, it’s usually about their religious holidays. So okay, they’re having religious holidays. Or it is an issue where there is a discrimination story about a woman who wears a headscarf. Or a man who wants to wear his beard. And that, you know, in and of itself, is reductive in terms of what the Muslim-American community is all about. When it comes to the headscarf, you know, I know it’s become very politicized, especially in the Middle East. And now it’s becoming politicized here in America. It, you know, the headscarf has become a political football.
Number one, a woman who decides to wear the headscarf is not oppressed. She’s liberated in her own mind. It’s her choice. So when it comes to the headscarf, we should not be imposing women how to dress and we should not be telling them they have to take it off. We should be pro-choice on that issue. And the other issues of discrimination, it just looks like Muslims are just concerned about entitlements. Now, the second problem, though, for us as Muslims, what is our responsibility is that I don’t think that we have effectively answered the questions that our fellow Americans have had about Islam. Now we tend to just talk about worship. But they want to know what is our social interaction, what is our role within our pluralism? You know, in 1988, we had about–what, about a hundred people, Muslims, Christians, Arabs and non-Arabs, go to the Democratic National Convention. We felt that we were part of that American experience. We felt that we were contributing in terms of the policy discussions, in terms of our interaction now we find less people attending those conventions, unfortunately, within the Muslim-American community. There needs to be more civic engagement. And with that, I think, more stories can be told about the Muslim-American community. And, again, it’s not about the scholars necessarily. It’s about the mainstream voice. What is that mainstream voice? And we still haven’t understood what that mainstream voice is.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Next question? [INAUDIBLE]
WOMAN:
[INAUDIBLE] You spoke a lot about–
SUHAIL KHAN:
[OVERLAP]–the mike–
WOMAN:
You spoke a lot about people who are putting misinformation into the mainstream and people who are spreading hate and I was wondering if you could give some names, some organizations, that we should be aware of in the media and who’ve been publishing books.
JIM ZOGBY:
I think that they’re–we can talk later. Their websites are known and they have been tormenting many of us for years. I had the great honor of speaking at the 45th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Bill and the Department of Justice invited me to give the closing remarks. The next day, an article appeared, “Holder’s Hezbollah Buddy”. Really tough for a Maronite to be a Hezbollah. [UNCLEAR] A couple of weeks later, I was invited to speak at the IFTAR at the Pentagon. Yes, there’s an IFTAR dinner at the Pentagon, sponsored by the Muslims in the military. Couple of days later, an article appeared about Zogby the Wahhabi. To be Wahhabi and Hezbollah and Maronite Christian–really a rough game. But these characters are all over the place. But frankly, what troubles me is not only their websites, which taunt college professors and urge students to spy on them and create disinformation campaigns about not just Muslim, but in particular Arab-American leadership, what troubles me is the degree to which they end up dominating on Fox News and on MSNBC and CNN when it comes time to talking about these issues. Actually, we don’t get the airtime to talk about them. They do. And if we get invited, we get invited to debate them. And frankly, I don’t want to engage in a debate with these guys and so it does become a–it does become a bit of a problem. And I think that where the media has responsibility is to fatten their rolodexes a little bit and be more responsible.
SALAM al-MARYATI:
But it’s not just that we’re invited to go and debate them. We’re invited to go and deny the accusations.
JIM ZOGBY:
Yeah.
SALAM al-MARYATI:
So it’s really a–the cards are stacked against us. And then, you know, you just look like you’re in denial and it goes back to the media question. How come the message is not getting out? Because the only time you’re invited is to say, okay, we’re not terrorists. We’re not extremists. And so, that’s all people think about. So that’s one thing. And number two, we were also called part of the Wahhabi Lobby. Number one, we’re not lobby anything. We’re just here to educate people about who we are and what we represent. Number two, our organization, from its beginning, has stated clearly that we don’t accept any foreign funding. Not because it’s, you know, it’s an issue of legality. It’s perfectly legal. But we have decided that we wanted to stress the Muslim-American identity. So we want it to be financially and philosophically independent from the Middle East. And yet somebody continues to call us part of the Wahhabi Lobby and, obviously, we don’t subscribe to that thinking and it gets repeated enough times that that’s all that is on people’s minds. [OVERLAPPING VOICES]
JIM ZOGBY:
One last point–just from–I’m sorry, I just want to make one point. I got my doctorate in religion. And then I did my post-doctoral work in how religion is used in societies under stress. And one of the things that you–you remember George Carlin had a routine where he talked about words and how they were used? Basically, it was an interesting lesson, because it was the lesson of Wittgenstein. The meaning of a word is how it’s used in a sentence. Well, the meaning of religion is how it’s used, too. And the point is, is that today, the language of Islam used by both this cast of characters we’re talking about, but also the terrorists, are identical in that they’re abusing language because of its evocative content. So the guy that gets up on the plane and says Allah or whatever and then blows the plane up is not making a statement about his faith. What he’s really doing is making statement saying I really hate you guys. Or I’m really angry or I’m really upset. Or it might be I’m mad at my dad. I mean, we could psychoanalyze what he’s doing. But similarly, the guys who throw Wahhabi or–I mean, I remember on the playground, people calling me names. I mean, they’re calling names and the name they choose to call is the name that has the most evocative reference. There was a time when I might have been called a Marxist, socialist, communist. Now I’m called a Wahhabi Hezbollah. Basically, it’s a way of taunting because the word has evocative content. Somebody says, Jesus Christ. They’re not making a statement of faith. They’re saying, I’m really mad right now. And that’s the same thing that’s going on here on both sides of this. So I think we need to understand the use and abuse of language in this context and understand that these guys who are throwing these names about, calling him Wahhabi or me Hezbollah, the truth value of it means nothing. They’re not concerned with that. They’re looking in their dictionary of like what’s the worst word I could use right now? And I think I’ll call him this. That’ll work.
AZIZAH al-HIBRI:
Well, let me just say again that there’s nothing new about this, really. And so, yeah, I meet [UNCLEAR] arguments. [LAUGHTER] But Jefferson, believe it or not, read about this in his own days. That the media might be taking control and, you know, influencing the thinking of the community so that it would have more power than it should in a democracy. This is a problem that America has, that it needs to solve–not only with respect to Muslims, but with respect to media in general. But as far as Muslim, my approach is that, instead of complaining, you know, about it, which is, you know, we’ve done enough of that, let’s look for a solution. And the solution, for me, is to start it. You know, there are a lot of Muslim doctors in this country. There are a lot of Muslim business people in this country. But Muslims in the past shrank away from being lawyers, from being reporters, and so on. And now there is a generation of Muslims, young Muslim lawyers that I’m very happy to see around the country and where are the communication people? If you want your own authentic voice to be heard, where are you? And if you are sitting in a paper and somebody hears your objection to the news they’re just about to publish, maybe you’ll be able to modify that view. So my approach to this is that, okay, we know the problems. Let’s now move ahead and do our part in correcting it.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Question here? Right here.
WOMAN:
So, you’ve already referred to the, I guess, like, media appeal of moderation or interfaith work and how that kind of doesn’t necessarily play and, you know, there’s psychological research that says that when you respond to somebody’s argument you almost solidify it in the opinions that they–in the opinion of the listener, or the opinions of the viewer. So what are we supposed to do if we can’t refute their arguments, when we can’t sell our moderation, when we can’t sell our identities, what are Muslim-Americans supposed to do?
SALAM al-MARYATI:
Well, number one, we feel that, you know, there’s a verse in the Koran that says, when it refers to hate, it says the rhetoric of hate is like the scum of top of water. It will float away. But the good work that you do, that is of substance, will remain on earth. That will benefit humanity. So it just tells you, number one, ignore all the rhetoric, ignore all the noise, it will always happen. It’s been happening from the beginning and it continues to this day. So the good work, even though it’s not sensational, even though it’s not going to get the media today, it–the relationships that we are building is creating energy, is creating a movement for change. Because the people that we get to know, the Jim Zogbys, the Azizahs, the Reverend Ed Bacon, Rabbi Leonard Beerman, these are great people. Jeremy Ben-Ami of Jay Street, these are great Americans. And so we feel that that story of what we represent as an American group of people working for peace and justice will prevail eventually. Then, in terms of being more media savvy, what we have, for example, we have a PSA, a public service announcement, that went out onto the internet and it got a lot of play. It got into the media. So it was called “Injustice Cannot Defeat Injustice”. And it was basically a group of Muslim scholars, by the way, in answering that first question, talking to young people and saying, don’t be fooled by the extremist rhetoric. So those efforts are getting significant media coverage, but as we know, media–any media–it’s only, it’s only within people’s memory in a short span. The next week is a whole new story. So you have to keep thinking about telling that story over and over again. And so we’re going to be doing some 9-11 service activities, for example. There’ll be, you know, health clinics in all the mosques on the day of 9-11. There’ll be the commemoration of the victims of 9-11. And it’s just a shame that, you know, part of the industry that Jim was referring to is trying to divide the victims of 9-11 as if Muslims were not victimized along with other Americans that day. You know, people of all ethnicities, of all backgrounds, who were in the World Trade Center Towers, were attacked. We were all attacked as Americans. So telling that story is important and we’ll be having a commemoration and vigils on that day. And it will get some coverage, but you’ll have to continue working at that. The third thing is, now that we have social media, we really are creating our own movement in the sense that the word is getting out through Facebook and Twitter and other means of social media, so that will get the interests of the networks at some point. And I think there’s much hope because we really have a lot of opportunity in getting the word out.
AZIZAH al-HIBRI:
Let me also add that not all the ways in which you respond to this situation are necessarily glitzy. Some of it has to be really hard, patient work over time. That is the work of scholars, because a lot of Muslims, when you tell them Islam says “x” and they don’t know that, they’ll say, prove it. And that’s where you can then pull an article like off our website and say, look at it. But we have to be prepared, because these articles, you cannot whip out of thin air. You have to take, you know, a long time studying them and analyzing them and footnoting them. Which sounds very academic. But believe it or not, I was in one country where they had a law which I thought was unfair to women and I was arguing that they need to change it. And the legislator looked at me and said, when after I expressed what I think is the correct position of Islam on the matter, he said, show me the footnotes. That’s what he asked for. So, yes, scholarly work is very important and so is grass root backed up by that work.
SUHAIL KHAN:
[UNCLEAR]
MAN:
[INAUDIBLE] –grateful for this conversation. And I’m proud to be a Muslim. I’m proud to be African-American as you can probably tell. And I’m also a veteran. As well as a health care and disabilities attorney. And it just always surprises me and you asked–and whether or not–I’m asking you, do you think that maybe we could change the narrative by making sure that our spokespeople are also representative of the full diversity of the Muslim community? There are many other African-Americans, even Latino and European Americans who, as you know, are the most increasing population of Muslims in this country, who are more than committed to be involved in this conversation. That’s my first question. And then my second question, is–don’t you believe that we should take, you know, the history note from the African-American experience in particular and see, for example, when we had the Reconstruction of the United States after the Civil War, that there was a rise in anti-African-American sentiment. That basically resulted in lynching and all types of horrible actions across this country and so, do we not see the same parallel? I mean, just some months ago, all attention was on Arizona and the laws there to demonize Latinos. And not so long ago, it was on another group of Americans. And so, don’t we think that, you know, groups such as the [UNCLEAR] Brothers who are funding some of these things–as we read in the New Yorker magazine, some of this anti-Islamic rhetoric, don’t we see that there are really entrenched interests, as was said earlier–[OVERLAPPING VOICES]–
SUHAIL KHAN:
–the question–
MAN:
[OVERLAPPING VOICES]–to really get behind–
SUHAIL KHAN:
[OVERLAPPING VOICES]–another question–
AZIZAH al-HIBRI:
[OVERLAPPING VOICES] Let me just adjust your terminology a little bit. As opposed to seeing a parallel, the way we see it and we teach it in my organization is that it is a continuity from the early days till now. Because a lot of these African-Americans were Muslims. And we believe that American Muslims from the 16th Century and later have helped build this country. We are not new immigrants. Because if you speak about new immigrants, you’re forgetting the other wing of Muslims who are the natives in this country. So not only do we see a continuity, but that experience you’re referring to is also our experience. The question is, how much within the Muslim community we identify with each other? How do we deal with the question of diversity within the Muslim community? And I think that has become a more conscious question more recently and we are trying to deal with that.
SALAM al-MARYATI:
Can I just stress one point and answer your question in terms of diversity? I think the more we stress the Muslim-American identity, then the more we will naturally have diversity in our representation in our events. In our presentations. In telling our story. So, yes, I agree with you, we could do more in terms of having that diversity and there are problems that we’re dealing with internally in terms of that issue. Where are we in terms of the civil rights progression? I think we’re still in the very early stages of that. We are not at the time of Martin Luther King. For Muslims-Americans in general. All of Muslim-Americans. Definitely African-American Muslims have–can contribute very positively to understanding where we should be, in terms of getting our rights in American society. But I think as a Muslim-American community, we’re still in the thought stages. We’re still in the stages of Marcus Garvey, for example, or W. E. B. Dubois or people that are developing the ideas for the Muslim-American community. And defining home as not where our ancestors came from, not where my grandparents lived, but where my grandchildren are going to be raised. I think that, in terms of the Muslim-American identity, no matter what background we’re from is very important. And lastly, God wants us all to be thinking leaders not blind followers. I think that’s the message that’s very important that we have to stress for the thinking Muslim, the common Muslim.
SUHAIL KHAN:
All right, we’ve got about ten minutes, so I’m going to ask for really quick questions and quicker answers. Go right here and then over here. We’ll go back and forth.
MAN:
Thank you. I was interested–I guess I have two questions. The first would be what contemporary Muslim country which operates under sharia right now would you point to as an example of the benign sharia that was described here today? And the second part was, which moderate Muslim groups spoke out when the–it was discovered the texts at the Islamic Saudi Academy in northern Virginia were talking about murdering Christians and Jews? Which were the specific people of the specific moderate Muslims who spoke out against that when the International Commission on Religious Freedom reported that?
SUHAIL KHAN:
Thank you. Do you want to–
AZIZAH al-HIBRI:
I’d like to answer the first question. Because it’s very simple. Our belief is that there is no Muslim country now that is following sharia law. And one good reason is because the very basics of the Islamic society, including the election of the head of state legitimately by the people, is not taking place. Where do you go from that? So I’m not standing here to defend any Muslim country. And I hope that within the United States, I can be a better Muslim than I can in some of these Muslim countries. You called it benign sharia law. It’s like, you know, what did we do to it or for it to make it benign? I don’t like that terminology. Our laws are humanitarian laws, equitable laws, etceteras. There is no attempt to make them more or less benign. The only issue is whether they are applied or not applied. And, in fact, there is no Muslim country that applies it. There are tons of Muslim countries that claim that they are applying it. And they’re using this to oppress their people. They’re trying to tell the people that they’re there and their laws are by Divine will, so to speak. And we need to tell these people that this is not true. And Divine will would want the will of the people to speak out.
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE:
–condemnations.
SALAM al-MARYATI:
Oh, you know, it goes back to the question, you know, do you want to validate the accusation that Muslims don’t speak out? And the fact is, we have spoken out at every instance. And it gets ridiculous how many times things keep coming up to the point that we don’t even know the cases that come up, whether they are actually valid or not. And the commission that the gentlemen refers to, some of the commission leaders have questionable views in terms of religious freedom of Muslims in America. There was a report on that. So, I don’t want to get into the politics of that commission or the politics of that academy. But when it comes to anyone saying that we should be murdering Christians and Jews, we condemn that. And we denounce any groups that espouse those beliefs.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Jim?
JIM ZOGBY:
This is one of those, if I can quote the New Testament, those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, stories–I condemned it. I’m not Muslim. I’m Christian and I run the Arab-American Institute. I was actually on “Crossfire” when that story first came out and I was asked about it and I said, it’s gross, despicable, and wrong. Should be stopped. When–a couple of years later, I was invited to Saudi Arabia to–by the U.S. Ambassador, Bob Jordan at the time, who had not been able to have a guest or a visitor to the country in a period of time, long time, and wanted me to come and do a luncheon at the embassy and invite a number of Saudi business leaders and he wanted me to speak to a number of groups around town. And one of the groups he invited me to speak to was a group called WAMI [PH] and it involves a lot of young Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia. The ambassador took me to the event, sat with me at the event. I was introduced. I spoke. And then they drove me back to the embassy when it was over. I got a question about Pat Robertson and some other U.S. preachers preaching hate about Islam. And I said–condemn it. And we work real hard every day to fight these guys and we’re working harder than you can imagine to deal with this bigotry in America. And I said, but let me remind you that you have imams in this country who are saying things about Jews and Christians that are deplorable. Are you fighting them? And they all nodded, guilty, and whatever and we had a conversation about it. A week later, I get back to the country and one of these characters I mentioned a moment ago writes an article about Zogby, supporter of Wahhabism, speaks at WAMI. [LAUGHTER] Didn’t pay attention to the fact that the ambassador invited me, didn’t know what I’d said, and actually had become an article in a newspaper that I challenged them on the bigotry of some imams. The point is, is that a lot of groups condemned that book when it was first released. And the Saudis did the job of getting rid of the book. It shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Pay attention to what is done, what is said, and I think we’ll do a lot better in this conversation if we did just that.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Question over here?
WOMAN:
[INAUDIBLE AT FIRST, TILL MICROPHONE ARRIVES] moderate for modern Muslims, which I, as a Muslim, have trouble with, as if we have to add a word first before just saying Muslims in this country. And I would like your input on this because unless you’re not wearing a headscarf, or unless you don’t go to mosque that–or unless you look cool, then you’re a moderate Muslim. But if you’re wearing a hijab, or you go to the mosque, or you’re a practicing Muslim, then you don’t qualify for that term. And the trouble with that is that we’ve seen some people in leadership positions advocating that those are the people that we need to talk to regardless if they were non-practicing Muslims or, you know, not cool-looking Muslims. So I’d like to just hear your–
AZIZAH al-HIBRI:
Well, I’d like to approach this label of modern Muslims in a different way, cause I know my colleagues here will address your answer more to the point. But, in Islam, there’s nothing wrong with saying that somebody has interpreted Islam in accordance with the society they live in. In fact, it is a required effort that Muslim scholars, when they live in a society, say American or European or Iraqi or whatever, that they look into the circumstances of their society and then explain the rules and the basic principles don’t change–but the rules and the secondary laws in light of that society, so that when they are used and applied, they cause positive results and not negative ones. Because the general rule in Islam is that God, the lawmaker, made these laws in public interest and not against the public interest. So, yes, there are scholars here, including myself, who are looking at the American society and who are trying to understand Islamic laws within the context of our society. And that is very traditional approach and accepted approach for what we do. What you’re talking about is something more political and I will let the others answer.
SALAM al-MARYATI:
Yeah. First of all, the Koran says that it is God’s will that you be a community of the middle way. Of moderation. And that’s directly out of the Koran. And the prophet also warned against any kind of extremism. To the left or to the right. Just stay in that middle way. So within our religion, of course, it promotes moderate thinking, progressive thinking, and it is the responsibility of Muslims now to apply that in whatever place and time they live in. Now, I agree with Azizah that the term moderate Muslim has been highly politicized so that now moderate simply means a person who agrees with the status quo. So, you know, all Muslims are bad. Yeah, all Muslims are bad. Islam is evil? Yeah, Islam is evil. And then that is the moderate Muslim. So that the only people who are the moderate spokespeople are people who have left Islam. And there’s a paradox in that. It’s ridiculous that these are people that are now the moderates. Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who’s not a Muslim herself. But she is, you know, given the book tours and speaking everywhere. Or people who support policies of certain industries. So they support war, okay, that’s a moderate Muslim. They support the policies of the state of Israel? Against Palestinians? Then that’s a moderate Muslim. So, because that term has been politicized and exploited, then that term moderate, now, doesn’t really mean anything in our community and I agree with you it’s Muslim or mainstream Muslim. To be a Muslim means you are adhering to the principles of Islam. To promote terrorism means you’re a criminal. It’s not even a question of whether you’re a Muslim or not.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Question here? [BACKGROUND VOICES]–the mike.
WOMAN:
Alongside with an increase in civic and political engagement from the Muslim-American community, what should we expect from our elected officials? Like, what role should they play in this atmosphere of Islamophobia?
AZIZAH al-HIBRI:
I believe they should stick to the values of the Constitution. [LAUGHTER] Create harmony among the people and protect their rights and–
JIM ZOGBY:
And they should be responsible. And they are irresponsible these days. The way–the Park 51 dispute, to the degree that it was a Manhattan fight–we’ve seen it before over the Khalil Gibran Academy, which is a terrible loss, actually, that that school got gutted the way it did. Nevertheless, it was that same cast of characters sort of playing this out and then, you know, some national political figures got into the mix and decided to exploit it. And then, one by one, you had it becoming an issue. I mean, I got–you know, you have candidates in states where there are basically almost no Muslims being asked, what’s your position on the mosque? And then taking positions, well, it’s [UNCLEAR] got the right to build them, but I don’t think they ought to be building it there. And–or, why are they doing it? They’re defaming hallowed ground, you know, it just–it became an issue that had nothing to do with, you know, state and cities and congressional districts across the country. Politicians behaved irresponsibly and what should have happened on the part of media, on the part of higher political leadership, is that we should have called them out early on. And said, you are being irresponsible. I mean, what we learned after 9-11 was that the measure of our patriotism was the degree to which we were true to the values of our country and that we would–as we said, it became a cliché–we weren’t going to let the terrorists win. Tragically, I’m reading the signs from those marches in New York. I’m listening to the rhetoric I’m hearing on some of the television and radio shows. I’m listening to what some of the political leaders, including presidential aspirants are saying. And the terrorists won. They’re winning this fight. And we’re sounding in our country no better than extremists abroad. And the Clash of Civilization crowd on both sides are driving this debate. It is irresponsible. It is a shame. George Bush was right. And it is hurting our country, our image abroad, and it is hurting the very social fabric of who we are as a people.
AZIZAH al-HIBRI:
I think you might agree with a very short sentence I would tell you which does not relate only to issues of Muslims, but what I’d like to see is for politicians to put the interests of the country ahead of political interests. And that will serve us quite a lot.
SUHAIL KHAN:
On that note, that had to be the last question. We’re out of time. So I want to ask Assad Akhter to close us out.
ASSAD AKHTER:
Thank you so much, Suhail. And thank you all for being here. It’s a problem of our briefings, we always run out of time in these great discussions and we always never have enough space. But I was just, you know, thinking with our panelists speaking that, you know, the whole time that only in America, you know, we have a public [UNCLEAR] room. Anyone can walk in and, you know, in this building, we always say, us staffers always complain that, you know, you don’t need an appointment. You can just walk around the halls if you want to. And, you know, we’re on C-SPAN, having a discussion about faith, C-SPAN, an entity, you know, dedicated to a public discussion for the American people. You know, we’re all blessed to be Americans and to be able to have this discussion and we hope to have many more in the future. Let me thank our panelists, our moderator, Suhail Khan, who was kind of the brainchild behind all this and pulled it together kind of in four days, but we needed to have it. Let me just introduce some of the executive board of the Congressional Muslim Staff Association. We have our vice-president Moon Sulfab [PH], our communications director, Mouaz Mustafa [PH], both on the Senate side. And our programs coordinator, Mr. J. Saleh Williams. I want to thank the House Science Committee for giving us this room and for Congressman Barry’s office for sponsoring it. You can follow the activities of the Congressional Muslim Staff Association, CMSA, on our website, congressionalmuslims.org. And thank you so much for being here and we hope to see you again in the future. Take care. [APPLAUSE] [BACKGROUND, OVERLAPPING VOICES]