E-mail a friendAkbar Ahmed
airdate August 16, 2007
The BBC has referred to Akbar Ahmed as "probably the world's best-known scholar on contemporary Islam." He chairs American University's Islamic Studies department and works to bring understanding between Islam and the West. An anthropologist, writer and filmmaker, he's held several senior positions in Pakistan, including High Commissioner (Ambassador) to the United Kingdom. He's also written numerous books and a theatrical drama, Noor. Ahmed is an expert panelist with the online feature, On Faith.
Scholar and author explains the value of learning more about Islam. (:58)
Akbar Ahmed
Tavis: Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is the former high commissioner of Pakistan to Great Britain, now chair of Islamic studies at American University in Washington. He's also a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. His new book is called "Journey into Islam: the Crisis of Globalization." He joins us tonight from Washington. Mr. Ambassador, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Akbar Ahmed: Thank you so much, Tavis.
Tavis: Fascinating read here, this text, "Journey into Islam: the Crisis of Globalization." Fascinating in part because the way the book is written comes courtesy of a trip that you took with a bunch of students. You took some students with you. Tell me how the research was done for the text.
Ahmed: Tavis, this is original ethnographic research. I took a field trip through the Muslim world; I went to the Middle East, South Asia, Far East Asia, and I took these young Americans with me. I did this quite deliberately. I wanted to find out myself what was happening in the Muslim world, and I wanted these young Americans to interact with the Muslim world.
So we met people along the way; we met President Musharraf, we met prime ministers, princes. We went to mosques and madrassas, people opened their homes to us. And there were hostile people, friendly people, hospitable people. But in the end, we came back with a very good idea what Muslims are saying, thinking, feeling, and for the first time, their interactions with Americans on the ground in these intimate surroundings, and that is all in the book. So that is, in a sense, quite a unique perspective of our relations with the Muslim world.
Tavis: Tell me more about the value of taking these young people, and what you gained from their interactions for the text.
Ahmed: Very useful, Tavis. I think this was the first time that many people had ever met or talked to Americans. Everywhere we went, anti-American feelings were quite high. Now, because I was invited as a sort of honored guest, say, in a madrassa, in a mosque, or in someone's private home with several hundred people, people would welcome me.
But there would be that undercurrent of anti-Americanism, and I'd try to explain American policies, American culture, American history, and of course they would not be entirely convinced. Then I'd ask my students to intervene and talk, and these are young students, optimistic, outgoing, prepared to reach out and begin the process of understanding and dialogue.
And very soon, the atmosphere would change. Very soon, they'd be exchanging cards and email addresses, and you could see that within two or three hours they had begun to make friends for America. And I call them the best ambassadors for the United States, and I would really say, Tavis, because the situation is quite critical in the Muslim world.
Right now, we're at a point where we may be losing hundreds of millions of people in the Muslim world quite unnecessarily, and we need to be doing something about this.
Tavis: When you say quite unnecessarily, you mean to suggest what by that?
Ahmed: I mean that a lot of Muslims in the Muslim world have this perception, I believe wrongly, that America is leading an attack in Islam. For example, we asked, my American team and I, we conducted questionnaires. So we'd ask people, what is your number one problem, perception, or misperception of the world?
And they would say the number one problem is the perception that Islam is under attack, and that America is leading this attack. Now, if this is true then we need to be, as President Bush and the administration and everyone wants to win hearts and minds in the Muslim world, we need to be doing something about it.
Tavis: Let me ask you for the purpose of this conversation, since you used the term now a few times, what you mean when you say anti-American sentiment that you heard and that you saw and that you felt as you traveled? And I ask that for this reason: because as I travel around the world, that term is tricky for me because sometimes what we refer to as anti-Americanism is anti-Bushism. That is to say, they don't like this administration but they don't necessarily hold that against America, and that's not always the case. So what do you mean when you used the term anti-Americanism?
Ahmed: You made a good point, Tavis - I completely agree with you. There is a nuance here, we need to tease it out. People have a lot of residual warmth for America as Americans. As you know, people respond very positively to Americans; Americans are seen as warm, outgoing people - friendly people. But you're right; many of the policies are not liked in the Muslim world.
Right now, for example, people know that there are troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; both countries are having great periods of anarchy and there's trouble there. People know there's tension building up in Pakistan, in north Pakistan. And there is a feeling in the Muslim world that all is not well with American foreign policy, and remember, we are talking, Tavis, of a part of the world which is 1.4 billion in population.
By the middle of this century, one out of four people on this planet will be Muslim. Fifty-seven countries, one nuclear for the time being, and its interest, really, to begin the process of understanding, bridge-building, and creating friends.
Tavis: You're starting to address this now; I just want to go a little farther - what's the value - for everyday Americans watching this program, what's the value of learning more about Islam beyond the obvious, which is what you just stated now?
Ahmed: It is critical. Islam is a global world religion. It's one of the three Abrahamic faiths, and Americans are very much part of this dialogue, part of the world leadership pattern. America is the superpower; they have six, seven million Muslims living here in the United States. America's closest allies are Muslim - President Musharraf, President Karzai of Afghanistan, and so on.
Its most implacable foes are Muslim - Osama bin Laden, Taliban, al Qaeda, and so on. Americans really need to understand Islam not simply in terms of theoretical or academic interests, but practical self-interest. This is something that they cannot afford to ignore or look at in terms of misunderstanding or misinformation. I believe that is a very dangerous attitude to the Muslim world.
Tavis: Let me go back to that question there that you referenced earlier, that you and your American team of students were passing out and getting answers from people in the Muslim world. One of the questions - I want you to tell me more about the kind of questions on the questionnaire. What made me think about this, though, is one of the statements you made a moment ago about bin Laden and others.
You asked on your questionnaire who they admired, who they looked up to in the Muslim world, and you got some answers. Bin Laden's name pops up here and there. But tell me more about that particular question. I'm sure I'm paraphrasing here, but tell me more about that question and what else was asked - samples of what was asked on the questionnaire.
Ahmed: That's very interesting, Tavis, because I was wondering how to approach this. You see if you go to a place like Syria, for example, and ask a direct question, now you know that the Secret Service or intelligence agencies may discourage people from answering honestly. So I deliberately designed a questionnaire where it asked for your role models - your five greatest role models.
And they gave very, very interesting insights into that society. Contemporary role models were invariably people - Muslim leaders - who were seen to be standing up to America. Now this is very significant. Throughout the Muslim world, we - so we had five percent, 10 percent, 20 percent, and surprisingly in countries like Indonesia, which is a moderate, very peaceful country traditionally, you had very high numbers wanting to say the role model for us is Osama bin Laden.
Even Saddam Hussein. So this is a clear indication that all is not well with Muslim society in terms of who they're looking up to. They're looking up to leaders who think - they are belligerent, who can stand up for Islam and defend Islam. There is that mood in the Muslim world, and that feeds into the sense of anti-Americanism.
Tavis: You referred to these students earlier as great ambassadors, and I suspect that's probably true all over the world. Children are always the best ambassadors. Probably is that children aren't the persons who sit in ambassadorial positions. And so if we're going to go about the business of sending out our best ambassadors, of trying to establish those relationships, trying to do something about the damage that's already been done by these policies over the last six years or so, the best way to approach that vis-à-vis personnel is what?
Ahmed: I would say, Tavis, people have to see Americans face-to-face in homes, at university campuses, on the media, in the Muslim world. And that is not happening; it's just like the United States in reverse. A lot of the media here does not show too many Muslims. You are one of the few people who's even asked me in mainstream media to talk about my book.
In the Muslim world, it's very different, so in the Muslim world what you're seeing is this thing in reverse - very few Americans appear there. The result is very few Muslims even have an idea what Americans are like. I'm talking about ordinary Muslims, and that is what needs to happen. I would like to see many, many more Americans out there in the Muslim world, really just telling people about America, about this culture, about its traditions, its mythologies, its literature, its folksongs.
And I think that would make a big impact. Remember the values that Americans hold dear - the values of education, of family, of knowledge, of information, of reaching for the stars. These are values that are very close to true Islamic values. However perverted or distorted they may be in the eyes of some Muslims, these are the true essential features of Islam.
Tavis: Let me talk about one of those values that you talk about in the book that we are not aware of - not necessarily a good value, but this notion of tribalism. You talk about the fact that tribalism is something in the Muslim world that we are not as aware of as we should be as Americans. So talk to me about this notion of tribalism.
Ahmed: Again, my students helped me. When I was writing the book I kept talking about tribalism and they'd say, “What are you talking about, Professor? Because for us, tribalism sort of finished in the 19th century and we're all citizens; we're all equal.” And I suddenly realized that we are talking of two different societies, two different nomenclatures, definitions.
And I tried to explain through the eyes of my students, and then, of course, the book, that Muslim societies are profoundly tribal. Now take a look at the names. Saudi Arabia. It's named after a tribe; the Saudi tribe. Afghanistan, named after the Afghan tribe. Balochistan, after the Baloch tribe. Waziristan, after the Wazir tribe.
These are tribal societies with a strong sense of identity, code of honor, and even the idea that if you're not on the lineage, you're not quite part of the universe. And this is a very important concept, so that if you're dealing with tribes and they're of course Muslim, so you have another layer of identity, as it is.
Islam itself discourages tribalism. The prophet said, "There is no Bedouinism," meaning no tribalism in Islam. There's a famous saying of his in which he said, "There is no Black man or White man over one another; there's no Arab or non-Arab over one another." It's only how well you behave, how good your deeds are, and that's it.
But today what you see is the clash between tribal identity and Islamic identity in the Muslim world. For example, honor killings, female circumcision. Many of these are purely tribal customs, and they've been absorbed into Islam and people then assume these are Islamic customs.
Tavis: Let me offer this as a quick exit question. I got just a few quick seconds here. What lesson - this is a great experience for these young people - what most importantly do you think they took away from the chance to be a part of this trip and this research for this book?
Ahmed: Well, they say it was a life-changing experience, and they're really on a mission now to get the message of the book and the book itself out to other fellow Americans so they read about it, create bridges with people, reach out to them, and again, establish America as a great nation which is leading the world in terms of into the 21st century.
Not being seen as a country that is, in fact, leading the world towards further and further and further violence, which is unfortunately how many people in the world are seeing America right now.
Tavis: Ambassador Akbar Ahmed. The new book is called " Journey into Islam: the Crisis of Globalization." Mr. Ambassador, nice to have you on the program. Thank you for your work, I appreciate the chance to talk to you.
Ahmed: Thank you so much, Tavis.
Tavis: My pleasure.
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