It was speech that stirred my soul, both as an American and as a Muslim. The President of the United States stood before the parliament of Islam's oldest democracy in Turkey and delivered a riveting statement that will resonate throughout the Muslim world. He said what needed to be said in plain and simple words: "The United States is not - and will never be - at war with Islam."
It was a powerful speech, in which President Obama stated persuasively that the only way forward for humanity is a partnership of peace between the West and the Islamic world. He spoke eloquently about the history of Turkey's long relationship with America, of how the Ottoman Sultan Abdelmecid supported the construction of the Washington Memorial that towers over the capital today. Obama spoke of shared hopes and values, of Muslims and non-Muslims working together to build a better future.
Many Presidents have spoken similar lofty words, but it was this President's unique life experience that gave them weight. As an American Muslim born in Pakistan and raised in New York, when Barack Hussein Obama spoke of Muslims being an integral part of American society, tears welled in my eyes as memories flooded my consciousness. I remembered going to elementary school in Brooklyn at the height of the hostage crisis in Iran in 1980. I remembered being taunted by my classmates as a "rag head" even as I stood with my hand on my heart to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
That experience would be followed by countless others, from that day to this, where my fellow citizens would question my loyalty to this wondrous country because of my faith. I remembered sitting shell-shocked on the street in Los Angeles on September 11, 2001, desperately calling my friends and family in New York and praying every moment that they were safe in a world lost to madness. And wondering how long it would be before the raging emotions of my fellow Americans would lead to the expulsion of my family and I from this country that was our only home.
I had assumed that a pogrom would begin and the days of Islam in America were numbered. I was wrong. America is better than that, and the President of the United States reminded all of us of that remarkable fact. It is the incredible spirit of America that allows us to renew, to overcome our demons and rise to heights that have never before been imagined by mankind. The same revolutionary spirit that put Neil Armstrong on the moon guided the American people to elect a black man with a Muslim middle name. A man who noted in Turkey that he himself, the President of the United States, had Muslims in his family and had lived in a Muslim majority country as a child.
And as I listened to his speech, I heard one word repeated countless times. Respect. It is a word that Muslims have craved to hear from American leaders. A recent Gallup poll of the Islamic world (published in Who Speaks for Islam by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed) showed that the greatest sorrow in the Muslim world toward America is a lack of respect for Islam. Indeed, when Americans were polled as to what they respected about Islam, the majority did not know, or simply said "nothing."
Perhaps that is understandable. Islam has been seen by the West as the dangerous "other" from the beginning, when a new faith rose out of the Arabian desert and conquered the Byzantine Empire, taking control of Jerusalem and the heart of the Christian world. I draw a picture of that earth-shattering historical moment in my new novel, Mother of the Believers, which tells the story of Islam's birth from the point of view of Prophet Muhammad's wife Aisha. And I explore how the conflict that was born in the politics of the seventh century has kept our civilizations locked in a deadly struggle today.
Americans have inherited that Western fear of Islam that goes back to the Crusades. Indeed, the country where Obama spoke was once the heart of the Ottoman Empire, which was poised to conquer Vienna in 1683 even as Europeans were establishing the colonies that would one day become America. When civilizations clash over centuries, it is inevitable that people on both sides see each other through a distorted lens. Many Christians see Islam as nothing more than a religion of aggression and fanaticism. And I think many Muslims have a similar view of the Christian world, seeing the modern West as the heir of the mindless brutality of the Crusades and the Inquisition.
But Obama reminded both civilizations that we do not need to be wedded to the past. We can look into each other's hearts today and see the shared humanity within, and we can move forward.
This is the American way. This is the Christian way. And this is the Muslim way. When we can all embrace that common truth, a new world can be born.
Kamran Pasha is a Hollywood filmmaker and the author of Mother of the Believers, a novel on the birth of Islam as told by Prophet Muhammad's teenage wife Aisha (Atria Books; April 2009). For more information please visit: www.kamranpasha.com
Follow Kamran Pasha on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kamranpasha
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Let's exchange mountains of respect for concrete steps in fighting militant Islam and lower petrol prices. Sounds like a good exchange to me.
Having said the above, and good gesture or deed is a welcomed one.
You seem easily impressed.
Were he to have really extended his hand in friendship, he's have gone to Syria, Iran, Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
I don't care if those who read this become angry, but this is how I feel!!
First of all you obviously wrong in your assessment. Second, I think you're getting all mixed up with "we's" and "everyone's." You can speak with any authority for yourself.
U.S. is a great and extremely successful experiment in peaceful co existence between various ethnicities. Armenian Americans co-exist with Turks. Jewish Americans and American Arabs do business together all over the country.
Same goes for Sunni and Shia in U,.S.--- In marked contrast to the Middle East, I might add.
Relax. Enjoy the fruits of American freedoms and tolerance.
Mr. Pasha himself chosen to write a book on the glory days of Islamic imperialism. No accident there.
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Good sentiment.
And you've chosen to write a book on the days of Islamic imperialism. I don't see much reconciliation there.
Perhaps you might get the word out and send an email to that 17 year old girl flogged in the street by the authorities for speaking to a boy. Or perhaps the sister in Pakastan gang raped by the town council as punishment for her brother's inappropriate behavior.
If you really cared about such issues instead of making people feel that Muslims are evil or dirty, might you find another way of expressing your views? I doubt your sincerity. Your hate is sincere.
Yes. It is true.
Just as members of separate ethnic communities fell the need to put others ethnics down also.
The irony of life is that those subject to prejudice are often highly prejudiced themselves.
The struggle is with un-enlightened elements in e-ve-r-y single ethnic community. And those incapable of recognizing the bad elements in their own community shouldn't be very, very careful talking about others.
You think the riots over the cartoons were ridiculous? Really? Muslims are a minority and the worst thing to do is to first put up an image of the prophet (something against the religion), and then make fun of him. It would be quite different if a Muslim did it in a Muslim majority country. But to do that was a direct hit at Muslims and what they hold sacred. How callous of you to not see how hurtful that is. I'm not religous, but my background has Muslims in it and that was very, very offensive to me. You don't marginalize a minority. Period. And to say that a whole sector of the world's population doesn't deserve respect simply because respect is what they value is ridiculous. Did you ever think that everyone wants respect and go to egregious and counterproductive routes to acheive respect are usually minorities? Or people who have clearly been disrespected not based on their actions but merely prejudice? Did you realize you mentioned a Vietnamese gunshooter (who I doubt did the shootings to GET respect)? Hmm. yes in a perfect world, respect is earned and nobody is pre-judged.
Remember when you challenge other countries on civil rights issues. They can always come back to you with hordes of evidence that Americans like you do not walk their talk. Sure some Americans elected an black President, but don't forget a truckload of white men also dragged a black man to death just a couple of years ago in Texas simply because he was black. We have a really big glass house when it comes to preaching at other countries about their civil rights abuses.
p.s. I'm not advocating riots, I simply mean to say that the cartoons of the Muslim's prophet was highly insulting.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3059365.stm
I love the fact that had Obama not gone to Turkey, most of the naysayers would be attributing the transgressions of other countries due to their "Islamic nature". Now that Obama went there, you're not bashing Islam, it's just those countries' policies. Well, just goes to show that so long as America keeps kicking the "Muslim world", the Muslims here in America would continue to pay everyday.
Oh, and here is something for those who are all too eager to get into combative relationships with other countries: It's best to lead by example.
A wise person is never insulted by being disrespected, but prays for the enlightenment of the dis-respector.
please cite your sources for your 50,000 slaves in the US. The difference between slaves here and in pockets of the Islamic empire is that everyone here condemns it . The jurists in Mecca (the center of Islam), Karbala (the holiest city in Iraq) and Palestine preach that slavery is God's will.
"In 2003 l Saudi jurist, Shaykh Saleh Al-Fawzan, issued a fatwa claiming “Slavery is a part of Islam. Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam.”He attacked Muslim scholars who said otherwise maintaining, “They are ignorant, not scholars ... They are merely writers. Whoever says such things is an infidel.” (THAT MEANS WORTHY OF DEATH -my caps and comment) .At the time of the fatwa, al-Fawzaan was a member of the Senior Council of Clerics, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, a member of the Council of Religious Edicts and Research, the Imam of Prince Mitaeb Mosque in Riyadh, and a professor at Imam Mohamed Bin Saud Islamic University, the main Wahhabi center of learning in the country.
a prominent Saudi cleric, Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik, recently urged Palestinians to do exactly that with Jews: 'Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don't you enslave their women?'"
Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri of Karbala expressed the view in 1993 that the enforcement of servitude can occur but is restricted to war captives and those born of slaves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_slavery
You are blessed for expressing such words of reconciliation and love. And you project the spirit of your religion the way it should be presented.
All people who care about forgiveness and joining will appreciate the sentiments which you have unfurled...
Alethia