U.S. Trip Is Positively Eye-Opening for Muslims

When they arrived for a monthlong visit last month, some South Asian Muslim scholars brought with them these perceptions of the United States: It was a country ruled by the FBI, the CIA and the Pentagon. It was a place where Muslims are routinely persecuted. It was a society of free sex and families in collapse.

But their trip to several U.S. cities radically changed their perceptions, many of the visitors from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh said during a recent stop in the Los Angeles area.

Zeenat Shaukat Ali, an Islamic studies professor from Bombay, India, marveled at the freedom of American Muslims to practice their religion and the active role of women in mosque life. In her country, she told an interfaith crowd in Claremont, many mosques don’t even allow women to enter.

“Muslims here are free to follow their own culture, dress the way they want, go to educational institutes and train themselves,” she said. “American culture has not overcome the culture of Muslims but accepted it.”

Quratulain Bakhteari, a Pakistani social activist, read the holy scriptures of Judaism and Christianity for the first time during visits to synagogues and churches here and said she was amazed to find deep similarities to Islamic teachings.

“Who has divided us?” she asked, perplexed. “The division has been extremely painful, but there is a lot of hope now.”

Aminul Islam, a philosophy professor from Bangladesh, had been convinced that Americans were warmongers who viewed all Muslims as terrorists. No longer, he said.

“I dreaded America; now I love America,” Islam said. “I came to realize the people of America do not want bombs, do not want to dominate others.”

The visit was arranged under a U.S. State Department grant with the goal of exposing South Asian scholars and clerics to Islamic life in America. So far, $550,000 has been awarded to the University of Louisville, Ky., to bring groups of scholars to the United States to showcase how Islam is practiced and taught here, along with how it is integrated into the larger interfaith community. In addition, American counterparts have visited South Asia.

“The idea was to dispel the very widely held perception in most of the Muslim world that Muslims in the U.S. are discriminated against, that they live in fear and the shadow of suspicion,” said Thomas Johnston, senior exchanges specialist in the U.S. Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Johnston said the grant reflects a congressional mandate to significantly shift public diplomacy and exchange programs toward the Islamic world after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Today, at least 25% of his bureau’s $356-million budget must be spent on Islamic countries, Johnston said.

His U.S. Office of Citizen Exchanges is currently overseeing 75 grants worth $14 million for exchange programs involving as many as 600 people a year traveling between here and the Near East, North Africa and South Asia.

Riffat Hassan, the University of Louisville religion professor who won the $550,000 grant for the current group of visitors and one last year, said her attempts to recruit participants for the program began just after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and faced widespread hostility in South Asia. She said she was peppered with suspicious questions about U.S. intentions. In Bangladesh, for instance, scholars responded to her pitch with a skeptical, “That’s all very good, but what are Americans doing in Iraq?”

Hassan said she finally persuaded people to come by casting the visit as a chance for moderate Muslims to get their views across to Americans. “Nobody is interested in our voices,” she told them. “This will allow you to say whatever you want.”

And speak out they have, in Louisville and Las Vegas, in Washington and Indianapolis. In Southern California, the current group of five women and seven men visited mosques, an Islamic school and a synagogue.

At Temple Beth Shalom in Orange, the Muslim scholars shared lox, bagels and conversation with about a dozen Jewish and Christian clergy.

Ben Hubbard, a Cal State Fullerton comparative religion professor who organized the meeting, said the two sides bonded immediately as they discussed the similarities between Judaism and Islam and the difficulties between Palestinians and Israelis.

“It was extraordinary that people from a different culture and religion, namely Muslims, could come into a Jewish synagogue and feel comfortable so quickly,” Hubbard said. “I came away thinking we had accomplished a little bit in terms of greater understanding and respect.”

At Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, they met with Christian ethics professor Glen Stassen to discuss peacemaking in Islam.

Apologizing for anti-Islamic remarks by some of his fellow evangelical Christians, Stassen told the group, “After 9/11, it’s important for Muslim scholars to communicate that Islam is a religion of peace.”

At Claremont United Methodist Church, an interfaith group of Christians and Muslims gave a potluck dinner of pasta and pies, tandoori and curry.

Afterward, the scholars shared their impressions of American life. Not everything was positive.

Bakhteari, for instance, urged her American audience at the Methodist church to address the nation’s expanding gap between rich and poor.

Farida E. Arif, executive director of a job development agency for poor rural women in Bangladesh, expressed dismay at the waste she observed here -- the widespread use of disposable plates, for instance. “With all this money, a lot of development can be done in the world,” she said.

She also urged more American women to step up to more high-profile leadership roles.

“We want to see a new face of America that can change the world,” she said.

The most common theme, however, was surprised delight at the discovery of Americans as essentially good-natured people. Many said they were now able to draw a distinction between them and U.S. foreign policies.

Islam, of Bangladesh, said the Bush administration is still seen as a band of “warlords” acting without moral authority to control other sovereign nations. Deep distrust remains about U.S. intentions in Iraq and a perceived refusal to act cooperatively with other nations.

But after numerous encounters with grass-roots Americans, he said, he has come to see that “everyone is crying for peace, and the foundation of all religions is the same.”

“America has a side to it that is not known to our people,” said Mir Haiatullah Hashimi, an English professor at Kabul University in Afghanistan.

“We are going to take this message back.”