This is a rough transcript of the October 2, 2003 lecture delivered by University of Virginia Professor Abdulaziz Sachedina.

DR. HILLEL FRADKIN: We’ll have the privilege of listening to today, a series of speakers who were asked to address the question -- obviously, a rather pressing question, of what was, what might be, the relationship between Islam and democracy, but in particular, American democracy.

We had a number of very, very fine talks last year, which culminated in a conference in May and which featured a very wide range and, I think, fruitful discussion. Alas we didn’t have the pleasure of Professor Sachedina’s presence last year at the conference. When last we heard from him he was somewhere in air and flights did not exist to bring him to the conference in a timely fashion.

But, it is a very great pleasure to have him with us today and I hope in the future that he will join us in a conference like the one we enacted last year. I’m also pleased to see many of the -- several people who participated in that conference, including Radwan Masmoudi.

And I want to say that we are continuing this year with the program that we began last year. We will have a number of speakers in the course of this year and I hope also we will mount a -- several -- perhaps one, perhaps two conferences in which there’ll be a time to explore issues at greater length than is usually possible in a seminar.

It is really a great pleasure and privilege to have Professor Sachedina with us today. He is Professor of Religion and Islamic Studies at the University of Virginia. He was born in Tanzania and he had a most distinguished Islamic education at the Aligarh Muslim University in India and Ferdowsi University in Iran, and took his doctoral degree from the University of Toronto and seems to have spent quite a lot of time in Canada, teaching at Wilfrid Laurier, Waterloo and McGill, and subsequently, Haverford College and now, at the University of Virginia.

I want to say also, Professor Sachedina did us a great favor coming today. He’s been teaching most of the day. And I trust he’s saved a little bit of energy and speech for us.

DR. ABDULAZIZ SACHEDINA: I am ready.

DR. FRADKIN: He has lectured widely on Islamic moral and political thought, among other things. He is back today from a speech yesterday at the UN, to foreign ministers from the Organization of Islamic Countries. And we might want to ask him a little bit about that later, especially as the report I have of it was that it was an extremely positive event.

I will only say one or two more things. Late last spring, I guess, early summer, Professor Sachedina gave a lecture through the good auspices of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, and in which he addressed the question of the responsibility of Muslim intellectuals, especially American Muslim intellectuals, to address the pressing questions in a candid, honest and energetic fashion. And I will only say for myself, I think it was a very important statement and I think -- I expect that today’s talk builds on that. And providing for us a kind of account of where Professor Sachedina thinks we are today. Well, two years after 9/11, but also after two years of vigorous debate within the American Muslim community.

DR. SACHEDINA: Thank you.

DR. FRADKIN: And please welcome Professor Sachedina. I should say that he will now become mobile.

DR. SACHEDINA: That’s right. I’m used to walk and talk, so that you’re awake, too. In the afternoon, you can’t have theology lessons, by the way. You can easily go to sleep.

DR. FRADKIN: Yes, it’s not the greatest hours, we old teachers know.

DR. SACHEDINA: Exactly. But, what we have to learn, we have to learn, right, at any time. So, we should be open to learning.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to address the -- your guests here today, under the auspices of the institute here.

And my remarks are very much centered on my analysis as an intellectual, but also as a practicing Muslim. I’m not simply an academic, but I also practice what I teach, at least in my personal life. I don’t insist others should be doing that, but certainly I have my own personal commitment. And I do see that there is an opportunity for us to think and rethink about the tradition that we all are attached to through either births or through conversion. So, it’s a very important time in the history of the Muslim peoples in North America and in the West in general.

I think there is a lot of rethinking being done in Europe as a whole, because we still have not worked out what we call the mechanism of both intellectual and personal, to integrate in the cities and area at large. And that integration is really built upon our ability to see our role as the citizens of a new country, citizens of the world in some ways, and I think it also makes it almost necessary to look at the tradition that we’ve inherited.

How does that fit into the new environment, which is politically, socially and even religiously different? I think I’m more religious here than I was back in Tanzania or anywhere else. This is what I feel. My students are surprised that I could be more religious.

I think because religion is built upon free negotiations of individuals. And individuals are responsible for their own spiritual destiny. And, therefore, there is the sense that you, I think, appreciate an American understanding of religion and its private domain, as much as its personal commitment.

So, here we are -- 9/11 changed many things in the Muslim community. But in my opinion, the changes have still not taken roots. Because there is a need to go to the roots of the problems of integration, as much as understanding one citizen’s role in the larger universe in which we are now living. So, that rethinking process has not, as yet, taken off.

There are two reasons for it. You need intellectuals and you need the traditional scholars to talk to one another. We’re still not talking to one another. So Muslim imams and Muslim scholars in the universities are not talking at the same wavelength. We are very different in the way we approach the historicist’s approach of religion, the way we look at evolution of religion and the way we see how religion becomes relevant in the times in which we live.

The imams are not very much concerned to show that. They are more to preserve authenticity, as they would call it. We are the ones that are seen not to preserve that authenticity and rather simply trying to secularize the tradition.

What I have is a religious vision that has come into North American situation. What has North America presented to the people, especially Muslims? Muslims, I think, from the time they’ve come to this place, they have been challenged to rethink, because the new environment requires adjustment. And therefore, in our adjustment we have to undertake a kind of rethinking that is part of the dynamics of the cultural tradition.

Islam is not only a religious tradition, it is also a cultural tradition. It informs life of the Muslim people. It speaks about not only the matters of private worship and spiritual development, it also speaks about how do you fit in the society. What should you do in order to become an active member in the society. So that dynamic tradition is very much what we call dealing with the three basic components or parts of it. And we’ll see that the beliefs and the doctrine that we have inherited or we learn about our religion today, differ a lot more than we did at home in our own native country.

The way we understand the role of the Divine in our life, the way we understand the role of the Prophet in our life, is very different today than we did in our own countries. There’s also the practices and the rituals. We have found ways of practicing our religion that is very different sometimes and the people who come from home countries sometimes find us innovative or they find we have drifted away from authentic Islam somehow because we are accommodating our own situation.

I cannot, for example, pray in the University, without finding a time between my program of teaching. Sometimes my classes are exactly the prayer time on Friday. I teach from 1:00 to 1:50, which is the prayer time on Friday. So, we try to make adjustments, can we then pray at 2:00. And people coming from home find that even the rituals -- although they pray the same way, but they don’t pray the same time as we did at home. So there are many changes taking place, because of the dynamism.

The third part is extremely important. Because ethics is rare, human beings are connected with one another. Our interconnections are generating in us some sense of reciprocity and some sense of neutrality and the accountability to one another. Now these are the areas.

This, the third area, is the most challenging aspect because ethics is actually tying the beliefs and practices into a system because this way, you have a sense of the rightness and the wrongness of the issues that you raise. Am I doing the things right way? Am I connecting the people in the right way? Am I in my family in the right way?

So, you have familial, social and even a larger, I think, universal ways of connecting and we are now talking about the global community. We’re not only talking about the community within the faith that has its own confession, it’s own rituals. We are talking about the large community. And therefore, the beliefs and the ethics are exactly the practice and the beliefs are connected in our ethical system. And that’s where we haven’t done much work, by the way.

That's the challenging aspect of the Muslim life today. We don’t have much in the ethical realm. We are not discussing political ethics. We are not discussing medical ethics. It’s hardly catching up. And the reason is that we have paid too much attention to the legalistic aspect and we always think that the legalistic aspects do integrate ethics. Part of the country, many a times, the rightness and the wrongness of the actions is not raised in the legal damage of Islam because there you have injunctions. You have to carry them out. You don’t question them.

It’s only in the ethics that you question. Is it all right to terminate the life of terminally ill patients, for example? Is euthanasia permissible? These are not only modern questions, but they’re ethical questions. And therefore they are to be dealt with and we still haven’t started teasing them out.

What we are discovering -- Muslims in the North American situation -- in the Western situation, is the relative application of our religious vision. It’s no more the absolute one that we used to think about. It’s no more the one that is written in the books in the hard letters that we can’t read between the letters. Rather, it is telling us that it’s not going to be the same. And people actually coming here, we have centers that are catering for the needs of different ethnic groups. And there is a dialogue between the ethnic groups, because they find practices not the same.

There are people who are coming from South Asia. There are people coming from the Middle East. And they’re all practicing Islam. They all are in the mosque together. They pray the prayer, but once the prayer is over, there’s a discussion and dialogue. How come not this? How come not that? In other words, there’s a relative application even in the area of religious practices.

As a cultural tradition, religion grows and is supposed to respond to the situation, given in the proper -- in our own, new situation because the changes are there. And as a living culture -- cultural tradition -- it is supposed to respond to the new developments in the society. And this is where the Muslim leadership at the moment, the religious leadership, has not even begun to think about the development.

The education that we are giving, even to our children, is still based on the textbooks that come from home. And they are different. The situation there is different, because there it is a homogenized society. Everybody is Muslim, living in the Muslim community. You don’t raise questions, for example, of my relationship with other communities. What am I supposed to do when I am a minority? Those lessons are to be built into the system. So education systems needs an overhauling, in some ways, to say that it needs to change.

And despite the change that we really notice, we are somehow caught up into what I call the problem of not being able to identify exactly how the change context will change the way we look, even at our religion -- any one of the basic doctrines, the way we see them as doctrines.

What we find here in the North American situation, Islam is seen and is taken as a movement. And by movement, I really mean a living cultural tradition that really continues to influence in different areas.

First of all, a creative action. We find that Muslims in this part of the world have become quite responsive to some of the larger changes that they see. And the new patron of spiritual revival is taking place. A new vision is there in place. But this vision is not coming from the leaders as much as it is coming from the lay leaders who are educated. So it’s not the religious leaders who are initiating the creative movement, by the way.

The creative movement is, very much the work of engineers, doctors, professionals, who are otherwise not trained in religion, but who have an interest in keeping the identity. And therefore, they are the ones who are pushing even the religious leaders to think differently.

They have not been responding very well, by the way. Because the professionals are seen to be unauthentic Muslims, so therefore, they are sometimes marginalized. But they have a lot of influence. They are the, what we call the fundraisers. They are the ones who are giving the money to the community. And they are supporting the community. That sends -- that first creative action is very much part of the dynamism that we find in the Muslim community at the moment. And it’s not still fully explored.

The second issue that is connected is with the communal identity. Why is this identity extremely important here? For the first time, I think, those communities that were living in largely Muslim communities called nations at home, are now living as a minority.

So there’s a question of connective identity. How do you begin to identify yourself? If you’re alone, you might be different. But when you are in the community, you do find a moral support. Islam is very much a community religion and really seeks individual’s attention to the community needs. And the community really comes together in order to prepare it. And this is the new vision, that the shared vision has a point of departure with the new forms of religions that they are building up.

What kind of religions are these? Islam is becoming more a source of social political identity. It wasn’t very much like that. People in the Middle East might not be identifying politically or socially in that sense. They are religiously connected. And their communal sense is not threatened in any way. So the collective identity is built in a very different way there than it is built here.

Then you find that religious rituals become very much identical to the national customs of the Muslims. So there are varieties. The ethnic varieties are a very transcultural community in North America and the West in general. We are more homogenized in our homes than we are here. And that creates, itself, both friction and tension and also opportunities to learn about one another.

Some of them can be very positive, but there are also moments of very tense argumentation. And this is where the dissention takes place. You find the challenges here, the way I see it in the Muslim community is accumulating in direction, among those who are sharing that vision of the Islamic community. There is this general feeling in the Muslim community in North America, more strongly, I think, more here than even in the Middle East, is the sense of community, the umma. That sense is far more stronger here, because at home you have nationalisms.

They are more pronounced and religious nationalisms become, actually, part of ones identity; Arabism or Prussianism or Iranianism. And we have all varieties of them. And even within Arabism you have Iraqism and Syrianism, all these kinds of nationalities play out.

But here, all of the sudden, as a Muslim community you are put together, even in the religious centers and you are thinking about an identity that is a collective one. And there identities -- the identity of a larger community that is mostly imaginary because there is no -- in reality, there is no such sense. Nationalisms are far more, I would say, sedimented in the identities of the Muslims than the communal sense of the global community. Religious people are looking at that and religious people are talking about that connection.

But it’s not as strong -- you don’t feel it that way when you are in the Middle East or the Islamic world as such, that umma has this kind of responsibility. Because every nation is in fact -- if you go to Jordan now, they will tell you that we are Jordanians first, and then something else. So, we are Syrians first, and then something else. So their identity in the home country, the native country, is quite, what I call, diluted, the community identity. Here, it is very strong.

What does it do? How does play out? What it does that it creates the dialogue and the debate among the people on the implications of this new identity -- communal identity? Because they are let, in potential it is available and they are never explored. And they are never really talked about. And everybody is quietly accepting the way the religious practices are done.

But the murky ethnic composition of the community is far more dominant when it comes to the domination of the centers. What I call the empowerment, that is necessary to keep the centers going. And there you’ll find that the tension is very serious.

There is also a sense of economic connections and you are engaged in the professional life, so we have, for example, Islamic Medical Association. We have also, Islamic Business Association. These are the businessmen and women who are connected. These are the physicians, men and women who are connected to one another. These kinds of identities are also taking the heritage in a very different way. So, there is shifting of the heritage that is taking place at the larger, I think, in the larger context of the community.

So Muslims in the West, in general, are struggling between two countervailing -- and this is very important to keep in mind -- that there are two trends and the trends are extremely, I think, they’re causing a lot of tension.

First of all, there is unprecedented economic integration. And cultural homogenization. There’s a common culture evolving in the second and third generation of Muslims. So, the first generation that has still survived is bicultural, but not the younger generation. It is uni-cultural.

They also lost the language, by the way. The language is not spoken. It is only preserved in the mosque situation. So the mosques are actually not only the hubs of authenticity in spiritual matters, but they also are preserving the native languages.

So, if you go to the Persian centers, Persian is the language. If you go to Arabic-speaking centers, Arabic is the language. And you go similarly in other areas. Afghanis have their own centers, so they have their own linguistic ties and cultural ties -- unprecedented homogenization of the people.

There’s one more thing that happens, is cultural and religious fractionalization. There’s cut off in most of the communities. They are all connected together in their opposition to the material homogenization and they’re all part of it. You are part of the system and yet you are rebelling against the system. How exactly is this going to work out?

The second and third generations have an advantage. They have the education from here. They were brought up here with the similar challenges that any American youth goes through. And therefore, their appreciation or lack of appreciation of the religion is very similar to other young people around in the country.

So this is -- but we are talking about this mainly in the first generation, or the parents, rather than the children. The children are caught between the two, by the way. And many times it’s not even clear whether they should accept the political integration or not. And there are questions about it.

First is the challenge of integration that the parents are resisting. Cultural integration requires Muslims to uphold some universal values and standards that stimulate more intimate interaction between the citizens. There are diverse people, different orientations, religious and cultural groups. There is something more needed to keep them, what we call, interacting with one another at the universal level. This is what we call the civil society. And that’s one of the challenges.

They are resisting integration, because they do not want to become fully dissolving, their own identities in the larger identity of Americanism. There’s a real fear that we might not be able to preserve our linguistic ties, our native cultures in some ways, which then is handed over to the mosque. So there are two institutions that are vying with one another. There’s a Sunday school institution and there is a Friday mosque institution, which also sometimes has lessons in the evenings for men and women in the local mosques. And this is -- I’m talking about North American situation.

And there you have this whole problem of how exactly to handle integration. The imams, in most cases, are completely against integration, because that would dilute the Muslim identity as a Muslim. And there’s also an insistence upon what we call the linguistic component of the identity. They might lose their language. So we make sure that the children not only learn the proper language in Sunday schools, they continue that education at home. So that is the program that is going on.

It’s not effective by there, because the curriculum is defective. Those who are teaching the religion are not educators. They simply know the religion and they teach it. So, knowing religion and teaching is different than being an educator and teaching the religion. It’s very different. So therefore, it’s very defective both in curricular level and also in the delivery of the information.

The three options with which we find the Muslims are confronted in this part of the world. Complete withdrawal from engagement with modernity. You want to see that, then you should have been at the ISNA conference in Chicago -- Islamic Society of North America. And you can see what I call the cultural impulse of withdrawal.

It’s not as much religious. This is surprising. It’s not really the religion that is really demanding that it should withdraw. I think it’s the fear that I might become thoroughly something else. So there’s insistence on wearing special garments. You adopt -- and it’s quite revealing, that experience of being in the ISNA conference -- annual conference, which draws about 30-35,000 people, Muslims. It’s quite revealing. Because what it is sometimes suggesting is withdrawal from engagement of modernity.

My opponents, when I speak -- or some people like us who speak, you’ll be surprised at young people. Yes. You know why they would do that. You would expect the young people to be with you. Because you are teaching in the University and they are University students. Shouldn’t they like to hear what you tell them about rationality of religion, about the accommodation, the integration?

But there is a resistance. And therefore, in the classes that we teach in the University, Islam classes, in the 100 students, I only have five to six Muslim students taking Islam course. They don’t need to learn. They already got it from Sunday school. It’s a very interesting way of looking at the religious information, how it is -- this is what I call withdrawal from engagement with modernity.

Why modernity is a threat? It requires accommodation with social and cultural forces. You need to have some kind of relationship with materialism. Everybody is earning, everybody is spending. It’s a consumerist culture in which you need to fit somewhere. You need to go to the Wal-Mart or the Kmart or the Sears all the time. If you don’t do it, you will not have the basic necessities. But you are looking for your own comfort. So that’s the accommodation -- social values, cultural values.

The third option is resistance. Resistance to the modern world is a defensive reaction. Keep in mind, it is a defensive culture, by the way. You are defending yourself from, against, the world disaffirming qualities inherent to the modern world. So, you are really trying to build a way of protecting yourself.

By the way, the resistance to the modern world is commonly shared by the Jewish community, the Christian community and the Muslim community. In some ways, everybody’s resisting modernity and with its implications. They say, well, we don’t want to be completely dissolved with no identities left for us. So they are together.

This is where James Hunter, my colleague in the Sociology Department, he has written this very worthwhile reading, The Battle of Cultures -- The War of Cultures [Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America]. Where he talks about the common ground between the Muslims, Christians and Jews, about issues that confront them as moderns. They have common ground against abortion, for example. They have common grounds against gay rights, for example.

Now these are religious sensibilities of the people and I think there’s room for it. The room comes here with the challenge of re-identification with Islam. What is my relationship with Islam, today, in North America? Is it the same as it was in Tanzania? Is it the same that was, let’s say, in Tehran, Damascus, somewhere? What is my relationship with the religion?

There is a minority response. And I say it’s a minority. I have no statistics. But I usually hear the same voices crying out. It’s a radical, loud voice that you hear. And this is a kind of minority response, calling for political disengagement -- no participation in the public space. We’ll remain separate, we’ll remain in our own world, and we will not participate. In the midst of great social and cultural and psychological uncertainties, we do not want to invest anything. It’s a minority voice though. There are fewer people who are going to do that than there are quite vocal in the community. They say, no dialogue with anything. No dialogue with secularism. No dialogue with even nationalism, for that matter. They are really withdrawn in that sense. It’s a minority voice.

Muslim preachers, the teachers in the communities who are extremely influential, by the way, we should not underestimate them, are searching for stability and identity. They are worried that their Muslims might be completely assimilated in the larger social universe and they might lose their identity. And therefore, what they have done is they have reenacted an imaginary nexus of the umma.

The feeling of the umma is far more strong in North America than it is back home because here you are trying to build this network of imaginary connection, which comes from its religion and the sharia. Sharia is also very imaginary, because you are not following the sharia in every aspect of your life here, truthfully, if sharia is being followed, only in the matters of human-God relationship. That’s where you follow the law. That's where you follow the religion. When it comes to interpersonal relationships, unless you are involved in the worst cases, then you’ll find as a man, it is far more advantageous to refer to the sharia. Because it does give men more power.

But if you are getting married, the woman has far greater power. When she gets married, she can negotiate her contract so they might go to the sharia in order to find that. But otherwise, the reference to the sharia is mostly imaginary. It is in terms of what we would call our connection -- our sense of unity is imagined.

Because in the real life when we come, we have a small mosque in Charlottesville. And we are not more than 150 people. We’re all divided on ethnic lines. And there’s opposition from one group with the other. So we don’t -- 9/11 was the first time that this small community opened its door to the Jewish and Christian community to come in. It was the first time.

So you really have a challenge at the moment. And the preachers are not willing to give in because they are worried about the future of their congregation. What will happen to them? They will become completely dissolved. They will lose their faith. There is separatism and exclusivism in religion, while seeking assimilation in all other elements of the open society. So I do participate.

Some of these people, even in Charlottesville, small community, they are physicians at the University of Virginia Medical Center. They are engineers. They are what we call data analysts. But when it comes to religion, they’re extremely narrow. So, they participate in everything in a very integrated fashion.

But when it comes to religion, it’s exclusivist and separatist. So we cannot speak about, for example, brutalism in the mosque sermons in Charlottesville. I’m talking about Charlottesville -- only one place. If you speak about brutalism you are almost endangering the special claim that the religious people have for their own tradition. That’s the kind of attitude that you find in that particular section.

Cultural identification is also -- this is where the silent majority is never heard. We don’t hear the silent majority. We hear mostly the vocal minority. And the vocal minority is quite influential in terms of religiosity, in terms of maintaining religious institution and identification.

But then comes majority response is then formed by the desire to be accepted. Most of the Muslims are going about doing their work in a very normal fashion. They want to go and become part of the society. They want to do things the way they’re expected to do. And also maintain their own minimal religious connection or ethical connection, whatever they want to maintain.

They’re also assisted -- they’re highly educated. The first generation of the Muslims, especially in last -- after the ’60s, when Robert Kennedy really opened the doors of immigration, we had the best coming in the country, and the most trained. There was a brain drain from the Islamic world. They all came here and they worked and they started contributing to society. So you really have advancements and ascendants.

And sometimes there has been pressure not to speak about your religious identity very openly. Whereby you can be more easily accepted. The model is the American melting pot and then formed by the need to make their way in the American economy and society. So there’s a very important incentive there to what I call the cultural identification.

What is competing with the cultural identification is the religious identification, which is exclusivist, it’s narrow in its focus, and does not allow for anything to go beyond the boundaries that are set by the preachers. Emerging position in the West, more and more, we find this to be true. I think it is my observation, if I’m not making an error, that in the last ten years I have seen this coming. But from 9/11 it has become even more pronounced. You can hear this.

I’m not allowed to speak in the Muslim community. I am not allowed to speak in the Muslim community. There is a fatwa against me. But many Muslim communities are still inviting me. So, they are breaking away from what we call the fatwa that does not allow me to speak. The Iranian community will invite, the Iraqi community will invite, so there are people who will invite you. In other words, they are not bound by, as they say, the decisions that are made in the Middle East.

Of course, the decision not to allow me to speak was made in Najaf, in Iraq. So, some of them said, well, we are not bound by that decision and we will continue. In other words, there is an awakening of sort. There’s an emerging integration of modernity with the religion from Muslim interaction with traditional religion.

This is the new intellectuals, by the way. And I find quite a few of us who are now teaching in the universities, we have, I think we have maintained our faith to the level of our personal lives. But when it comes to academic treatment of a subject, they don’t shy away from it. We treat it very academically and we can sit with our colleagues in Jewish studies and Christian studies and sit with them and dialogue. We are working together. We teach courses together. In other words, this is a new approach that the modernity and religion need to find a way of interacting. The traditional paradigm, the way it is upheld in the centers, in the Islamic centers is not very conducive to this dialogue. There’s dissention there.

There is a search for the shared moral commitments and vision in the world, the word of spiritual model connections and relationships. There is more stronger relationship between the Jewish and the Muslim community, by the way. Don’t look at the Israel and Palestinian situation. Here is it much more closer. There’s a much closer working relationship, because they share many things in common. There’s a lot of common concerns between the two communities.

If you go to Toronto, Los Angeles, some other major cities, you’ll find there’s a lot of cooperation. Who is cooperating? These are the new intellectuals -- Muslim intellectuals and Muslims who are now being trained in North America to become the new leaders of the community.

There is also accepted, what we call hermeneutic variability. Religious sources have tended to become literally interpreted all the time. There’s already a movement that you can’t adhere to the documents literally. There has to be ways of explaining our relationship in the modern world.

This is a new trend. And therefore, the new work that is being done in North American situation; Professor Fazlur Rahman’s work, for example -- Mohammed Arcoon’s (sp) work. These are the important sources today. They are talking about an Islam that has gone to the new hermeneutical procedures. It is historically discussed, historically debated, and it is no more essentialized the way the Orientalists did it. So there’s more of what we call realistic approach to the religion and the way it makes, I think, possibility for the Muslims to create a civil social association.

We also find that there’s an acknowledgement -- more and more people -- this is the emerging silent majority. More and more people are talking about pluralism within the tradition itself. Because one of the things in the last 25 years, 30 years, Wahhabism poured thousands of dollars, millions of dollars in order to create what we call a church of Islam. It’s a very interesting notion, by the way. That they wanted everybody to believe and to practice Islam the way they say it was. Now there’s no church in Islam, surely. But there is scholarly seminarian influence. And they try to do it.

In the 25 years, they created this narrow vision that this is the only way Islam has to be. In that, by the way, the cultures were completely dismissed. So there’s no more birthday celebration of the prophets’ births. There’s no more celebration of the major festivals that were very common in Turkey and other parts of the Islamic world. And it’s become a very dry, cut Islam that requires to pray five times a day, perform your pilgrimage. It’s completely what we call formalistic attachment to religion.

Sufism was out, mysticism was out, philosophy was out. That was Wahhabism. That was Salafi type of Islam. And that had its own implications. They created what we call American Islam. And for a long time we, in the public space, used to believe what the Saudis told us what Islam was all about. We referred to our dear Ambassador Sultan bin Mundal -- Mundal bin Sultan (sp), I think, to see what Islam was. And we are horrified to discover that that’s not what Islam is all about. Because after all, 9/11 has opened some new venues for us to understand Islam differently.

The challenge that is really, I think, going to have a lot of implications of the public space, for democracy, is the recognition and study of Islam and history. I was in this conference, ISNA, and if you went around in the bookstores that were there, by the way, if you just took a stroll around those bookstores, there was not a single book on history of Islam.

History is not studied by Muslims. We have pious accounts that we read and we get what we call spiritual encouragement from. We are not interested in historical discussions. What is the problem with history? It some how relativizes the experience of the early community. In other words, it removes them from being paradigmatic case, to the case that can be applied at different places, in different times. That’s what I call the relativity.

Pluralism confronted with exclusionary religiosity. And I’m talking about the real debate and discussion at the moment among the young people in the community. How should we deal with the non-Muslims? Because they are infidels -- these are young people who’ve been brought up in the education system here. And they speak about some -- the questions they ask you is mind-boggling. Where did it come from? When you probe them, by the way, they are very honest about it.

"I am the product of Saudi Institute," they say -- So they went to the high school that is somewhere in Virginia, by the way, Northern Virginia. I don’t know where it is. But they said "I am the product of Saudi Institute and that’s what we were taught, that non-Muslim life has no value."

Now when you come to this exclusionary idea, you also come to the whole question of accountability. This is the fundamental dimension of democracy. Accountability to humans or to God? Now Islam was at the age, in the Axcel (sp) Age, most of the rulers -- Muslim rulers, in the past, used to say that they are accountable to God, so they will wait for the day of judgment to pay their accounts. So while they are on the earth, they are not accountable to any people.

And there were -- there were autocratic rulers. Those were the dynasties. They were kings, as Muslim historians describe them. They were all kings. They had malochia (sp). They were not khalifa anymore. They were not the khalifs of God anymore. As kings, they were not accountable to the people, of course.

Today, the question is posed again: Who are the rulers accountable to? If they are not accountable to the people, who are they accountable to? God only? We can’t wait until the day of judgment to correct the situation. This is where democracy plays a very major role.

What it does is it increases what we call the value of accountability of public officials, which is absent in the Islamic world in general. No public official is accountable to the people. You can continue to rule for ages, right? That’s what you find, dynastic systems -- 99.9 percent vote given to one person, you know. Every time, the elections are in that sense.

This is changing. It’s no more the same. And the larger question that is being raised: freedom with, without, or in religion. How are we going to work out our understanding of freedoms? And that’s the major challenge. That has implications for the public space. American public space is shared by the concept of freedom and liberal attitude towards individuality. The individual is free to do as he or she pleases to do, as long as they don’t step on somebody’s toes. So you do recognize the rights of others -- that kind of freedom.

Now, when you look at that, it is a major question for the Muslims. And therefore, it’s very interesting to note that there is ambivalence to the public participation. In fact, I can say that in ’80s when I used to talk to the community before the fatwa was given, my message was clearly to the community, wherever I spoke, one was the topic of human rights and the other one was political participation of the Muslims in this part of the world. That they should politically participate in the community. They should become part of the American social universe by participating and integrating themselves.

That was in ’80s. And the message was very clear, that human rights must be respected. Now there is this whole question about human rights and whether there is a language of the rights in the religion. But that’s not the subject at all today.

What you are looking about is a belief system that claims eternity and relativity that it very much generated by a supplication in a new environment. That’s the greatest challenge and dissention in the community. How are we going to retrieve the tradition that is, relatively speaking, capable of directing our lives here and what else do we need to bring in? This is an ethical question, by the way.

Now the business ethics -- and I lectured in our business school about Islamic ethics. Actually there is a presentation here on Islamic, what we call, financial structures. The Muslim participants in the classroom in our Darden School of Business, they said we don’t follow any ethics in the Islamic world in the business world. We just run our businesses. So they were actually challenging me.

And there was a Lebanese student there was doing MBA and he said, I never heard about this. I said, well, you didn’t hear it, but it is in Islamic sources. In other words, ethics was never discussed. Business ethics is a new topic, not only here, but also there.

So, there are values, by the way. In the law, in the society, there are values that generate trust in the way you wheel and deal in the matter of goods, in the matter of finances. People are fulfilling their obligations. Because the Koran does say that you must fulfill your obligations. But the new generation that is coming into the light today, they don’t have much, what you call, the sense in which we are raising those questions.

There are basically two thesis with which Muslims are faced in these present times. And this is my last slide, by the way. Should we adhere to the past -- tradition, scholarly heritage -- in the field of law and theology? Is it still relevant to what we are doing?

What has happened is that more and more the sacredness is attached to the texts. The works of the scholars in the past are seen as authoritative and finally binding. And the politics are being played out that the religious scholars are the heirs of the prophets. That means they are supposed to lead. [Speaks Arabic.] The religious scholars are the ones who should be inheriting the mantle of the Prophet. That means the mantle of authority, in the society. Therefore, there’s a tendency to look at them as the source of emulation. Are they capable? Are they providing the directives that we need?

And the second thesis is a modernist reformist thesis. This is where I also fit in -- my own understanding. There is secularity. We all are claiming and all are believe -- I can prove to you from the Koranic and from the sharia sources, there is a secularity and I would say even functional secularity in Islam accepted.

Suppression of jurisdictions. Religious is, strictly speaking, God-human relationship and no human institution has jurisdiction. If I don’t pray five times a day, there’s no human court that can punish me for that. If I don’t perform my pilgrimage, there is no human court that can punish me. That’s God-human. But there’s also another part to it, which is, if I’m not fulfilling my obligation as a citizen, then the court can punish me for that. So this is a very clear jurisdiction.

There’s also the disestablishment clause. We used to speak about disestablishment in terms of separation of church and state. In the Muslim context, we speak about what we call religion as a guide to the personal life of the individual, but not as the governance. So religion does not really claim governance. Because the moment religion comes in the public space to govern, it divides and excludes. There are those who belong to the religious community. They are included. Those who don’t, they are excluded. So even when there is a notion of citizenship, such an ideology can really be divisive, especially if religion becomes a source of governance, rather than a source of guidance.

Accountability of all who hold public offices for the people, including the religious establishment. Today religious establishment in most of the Islamic world, they say they are not responsible to any political authority, although they are controlled. In some countries, they’re directly appointed by that. In Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in many parts of the Sunni world, they are directly appointed by the government, and yet, they are not holding themselves accountable to the public.

What we are insisting is that even the religious establishment is accountable to the public. In other words, if they fail in their obligations, we can question them. That’s the root of democracy. And that’s what we can take from here and teach in the Islamic world.

I think what I found in yesterday’s meeting -- day before yesterday. It was Tuesday. I’m missing my days. It was Tuesday that I was at the UN. I think what was remarkable was that everybody agreed. I could feel it. Because you know when people make faces. When they don’t agree with you, your audience -- when you can look at them and say, uh huh, you’re not doing a good job or convincing. And I could see that they were mostly convinced that the role of religion needs to be in the area of guidance and not governance. Because governance is human institutions.

And the Koran does not speak about the preamble -- does not speak about the system of government. It simply says, there’s a purpose for the government. It is to institute the good and prevent the evil. And that’s the sole justification for the government to exist. Which is ethical, by the way, and yet is not accepted. So we have really a thesis that is acceptable.

In fact, I got the Omani representative and the Jordanian representative, the foreign ministers, they told me that we want you to come and talk to our people in our country. I said, will I be safe? They said, yes. So, thank you very much. Thank you very much.

DR. FRADKIN: Let me say a few things about how we’ll proceed from here on. We’ll have a question and answer period. Please, if you do want to ask a question or make a comment, please wait till the microphone reaches you and please identify yourself by name, and institution if you like, so that we have a proper record.

I also want to say -- I should have said at the outset, that after we conclude, there is a reception for Professor Sachedina and we hope that you all will remain.

Before I turn this over to the floor, I thought I might use my prerogative to both make, first, one observation and then to ask a question. The observation is this. And it’s not -- it’s an observation that was made at the conference which we held in May, which impressed many of the Muslim participants.

Which is that, the problem as you describe it for Muslims in North America is not simply unprecedented. And of course, your reference to Jim Hunter’s work shows that other religious communities have come here, have perhaps been subject to quite different forces, either a dislike from the majority.

The case that most interested -- actually, that most prevailed in our discussion in May, was the situation with the Catholic community, which for a very long time was a minority community and looked down on and both -- sometimes hated, sometimes feared. At the same time, the desire or the fear of many foreign religious minorities is that they would get lost in America. And that this is -- it was clear from our discussion in May that American Muslims are insufficiently aware of this fact. And if they were, it would -- I don’t know exactly whether it occurs to them, but there is some -- there may be some lessons to be drawn from considering the situation of other religious communities.

And in that regard, let me just say that this is one of the reasons why the Center has engrossed in this. We have an interest in the question of religion and politics in American democracy generally, and the tensions, even the paradoxes that that involves. And we see, at least in some degree, the situation of the American Muslim community as no different -- facing no different challenges than other religious communities do.

The question I wanted to ask was this: you and other people have -- and it was very clear in your talk, have placed, very much, the emphasis on the development of the ethical discourse with Islam. As the bridge between -- a bridge that is heretofore unavailable between the recent Islamic experience, the modern world and the especially, the American world -- you eluded to the fact that there is some considerable resistance to this in certain quarters, especially from the point of view of the law.

Could you give us some sense of what you think is the receptivity of young American Muslims to this? And what level -- because it does seem to me that that is a very promising route to go. Not merely because it promises peace and harmony, but because it promises a deeper, richer understanding. But some of what your sense is of where that -- well, if I may put it this way, your own project stands?

DR. SACHEDINA: Right, right. I think it’s important to remember that the younger generation is not all -- I might have given some, perhaps, misleading sense, that they all are monolithic. They are not. Even these five students who take, let’s say, a course in Islam -- the course that I taught last spring was Islam and Democracy. And some of these students were the graduates of the Saudi Academy. They came afterwards, after the course was over, that we have changed our overall thinking because my emphasis was on the ethical bridge. Because ethics provides with what I call the universals, that we can connect other communities -- make a common cause. And this is what is the essence of civil societies that you are voluntarily engaging into something that you believe in at the ethical level.

The emphasis on the sharia is -- the sharia divides the world into believers and nonbelievers. Whereas the ethics has the capacity to look at the human being as human being, without engaging in leveling that. I think that has been a cornerstone of my thesis.

That we will never have an inclusive theology between even the world religions. We will never have a common theology, but we will have a common ethics that we can all share with one another. In other words, ethics could become a bridge-builder and could provide us with -- should the younger people who are really -- who listen to these, they go through this semester work, they come out with a much more positive view about other human beings.

Because what the sharia does is that it gives them a sense of identity, but it’s very, very exclusive. And ethics somehow opens it up. Says well, human dignity is available to everyone. Human conscious is present in everyone.

For example, we read Social Justice of Sayyid Qutb. Sayyid Qutb has one chapter, in which he -- the title of the chapter is "Freedom of Conscience." But actually he speaks of the freedom of conscience of Muslim conscience. He thinks non-Muslims have no conscience. Now, when I challenge the students to think, it’s very hard. I say, look, Sayyid Qutb is very important. You are studying him, but remember, the freedom of conscience does not mean anything more than the freedom of conscience of Muslims.

So, here, for the first time, it strikes them that yes, we are reading Sayyid Qutb -- (inaudible) by the way. It’s a good source of security in a world of uncertainties. But then it is -- also there’s loopholes. So, we show them -- the moment we show this, they begin to think. And they say yes, true, that the conscience is the measurement of my ethical behavior. And I must (inaudible) of this.

So I think our project is proceeding in a limited way. In the lectures that I gave last year in Toronto, I gave about eight lectures -- seasonally I go. I spoke about the freedom of conscience and the gathering was of 1,000 people. They are radicals. So I gather the dissent of the (inaudible). We don’t agree (inaudible) the community.

I think there is a sense that we need to understand our new, ethical role in the society. And I think that’s going to be the only source available for building the civil society we are talking about. We can talk to the Jews about it. We can talk to the Christian. We can talk even to ethicists about it, that we have a common shared values in the ethical realm.

DR. FRADKIN: Yes, Mr. Ruffin?

MR. DICK RUFFIN: My name is Dick Ruffin. I’m with Initiatives of Change, formerly known as Moral Re-Armament. First, a word of appreciation and then a question. The appreciate has to do with your book on the Islamic roots of democratic pluralism, which I was able to use in some training that I and some others did with U.S. Navy Chaplains. And it was a great eye-opener and help. And I particularly appreciated your emphasis on the Koranic truth, that God can get through to any individual. If that’s not a sufficient justification for individual responsibility in democracy, I don’t know what is.

But my question, a little awkward one, has to do with the American Muslims who are not immigrant Muslims. That is, primarily the African American Muslims, of which there are quite a few. And they have a wholly different perspective and starting point. And I’m wondering how the project of modernization and adjustment to the new realities that the immigrant Muslims have living in America, is affected by the realities of the African American Muslims?

DR. SACHEDINA: (Inaudible) African American Muslims. I would say the native American Muslims, they could be Anglo-Saxon or white Muslims or black Muslims. They are very suspicious of pluralism. They are very suspicious of modernity. Part of their -- sometimes if we read their narratives about conversion to Islam, is the uncertainties of the modernism that they are rejecting -- or more adhering to traditionalism. And in fact, they are the most critical of our work, who are born into Islam.

My book, by the way, has been described by Professor Hamid Algar as a pseudo -- he uses the terms that, oh no, this is not Islam at all. So, you have a total rejection sometimes that you hear from the converted Muslims, because they are suspicious. They have a good experience in the Western post enlightenment religiosity. And they’re questioning that. And when they see that we are doing similar -- that we have a similar project in Islam, they become suspicious that maybe they are doing the same harm that the enlightenment scholars did to Christianity.

In other words, they see, some of them, I don’t think all of them are informed of what we say or what we write. But certainly those who know, they think that we are on a very dangerous path of relativizing Islam, of making compromises that aren’t acceptable with the traditionalist views.

I have my strongest critique is an American named (inaudible) and he is white Muslim. And he has written a 32-page long critique of my book, by the way, tearing it apart from the traditionalist point of view. So you can have that kind of -- that reaction, I think, is expected, because I think Professor Legenhausen knows the dangers of secularism and is suspicious that we are perhaps falling prey to the same kind of secularism, which destroyed Christianity. We might be destroying Islam like that. I don’t know. So that’s the suspicion. If you look at the review, 32, 33 pages long, it basically says that this is a better path for Islam to go.

DR. FRADKIN: Yes, Mr. Bernstein?

MR. DAVID BERNSTEIN: Yes, Hi, I’m David Bernstein. I’m with the American Jewish Committee. Thank you, Dr. Sachedina, for that very enlightened presentation.

I, too, also want to ask a somewhat uncomfortable question. Since 9/11, there’s been a spate of news stories that have reached, really, a fevered pitch in the last couple of weeks, about certain Muslim groups or individuals -- most recently, Dr. -- Mr. al-Amoudi, who have been accused of being involved in terrorism. And I’m wondering how this has impacted Muslim identity and the dialogue among Muslims in this country?

DR. SACHEDINA: (Inaudible). And it counts against us, because then we appear to be those who are really crushing democracy in all places. And it really -- same way in the Muslim communities also. You’ll find we are the moderates who are trying to somehow talk about some moderation.

We sound to be the enlightenment group in the Muslim community and then we lose our authenticity and reliability in the eyes of the people. And I think -- I go for consultation in the State Department and the Defense Department. And many times when they consult me, I make it very clear that they really need to build bridges and try to see that we don’t go overboard in our fear of what might be, you know, dangerous to us. I think INS at the moment is on that path. And I think some of the very moderate preachers were saying on the NPR interview that you also were there, that if this trend continues, the moderates will have a very hard time in the community, to function. They will not be listened to at all.

DR. FRADKIN: Okay, I’m sorry. Well, okay, we’ll come back to you Radwan.

MR. LOUAY SAFI: I’m Louay Safi, of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. Thank you, Aziz, for your presentation. I found myself, basically, in agreement with much of what you had to say.

But I would like to problematize (?) your linkage of Islam and modernity. Because you seem, in a way, to say that well, everybody has to conform with modernity. And I take it to mean modernism. I mean, with a very modern culture, that you are part of this melting pot, trying to bring everybody into one set of culture.

So, any culture that seems to be outside of the norm, then it has to be dismissed or looked down upon. And I have a problem, really, with the fact that well, why some people dress in their, you know, traditional dress.

I mean, I can tell you this very quickly, that the Muslim community historically cherish diversity. I mean, diversity was an important part of Muslim society. To the extent that you find modern state, has always to suppress somebody really, to establish itself. It has to, you know, force one language on a multi-linguistic society. It has to form one set of norms on multi-normative society. And so, that’s why the modern state outside of the West, really is very oppressive.

I mean, you travel. I travel. I mean, the leviathan outside is very monstrous, because it doesn’t -- it’s a very centralizing state. In the West, for some reason, there has been a melting pot in the United States, but at the expense of what?

I mean, look at the Jewish community. It has to be really forced, ultimately, to identify with certain norms, even when its religious background would really take it elsewhere. There is a similar trend within the Muslim community.

So I think we have to problematize, really, ourselves and we could see now how modernism is losing its ability to inspire people. It’s become more divisive, more hegemonic, more suppressive, so I know that you’re not really suggesting that.

But I see in the way you are handling that part, a bit, really, I mean, in my view, dismissing the problematic aspect of modernism even in American society. Why the religious community, you know, is having difficulty succumbing or submitting completely to this, you know, very virtual culture that everybody has to conform to. Thank you.

DR. SACHEDINA: I do make a distinction between modernity and modernism. I don’t use in the synonymous way. Modernity is what I call the external force and conformity to the general way in which we deal with the things. Modernism is more ideological. Secularism, rationalism being part of it. These are the two important rings of modernism.

Modernity, you can adopt modernity without having to really give up your own traditionalism in some sense, because you are adopting it outwardly, and yet, you are not fully with it.

So, I take it -- by the way, I’m using Bruce Lawrence’s distinction between that when he talks about defenders of God, in that book that he talks about on fundamentalism. He makes a -- I think it’s a very rare take on this distinction, that we sometimes don’t use modernism in that sense at all, I think. And therefore, I’m conscious of modernity, versus modernism.

Modernism is ideologically submitting to secularism and rationalism, the two important pillars of modernism. And that would call into account many of the -- call into question many of the suppositions or presuppositions of the traditionalism. Whereas, modernity allows you to function in the society without giving up your traditional values and your traditional understanding of what religion means to you. And still, you are able to function in the society at the level of what we call common ground, that we have created for human interaction.

MR. SAFI: (Inaudible) outfit or different names? I mean, why should -- a Jewish person have one Christian name, you know, in the public, you know, and outside in the community, has, you know, a Jewish name. Why should the society impose, very forcefully on people, to succumb and to conform to a set of identities that are formed by the majority. And these are religious, as you know. I mean, the modern West starts with the Reformation. It doesn’t start, really, with the Greeks.

DR. SACHEDINA: (Inaudible) options. In the second option are the assimilators. When I went for the first time to lecture in Detroit, it was hard for me to know that these were Arabs that I was talking to. They did not know a word of Arabic and their names were all Jack, John, Tom. They were not Arabic names at all.

We had the first generation of immigrants, where under a lot of pressure to assimilate. And they were coming from the cultures that were not well to do in many ways, so we had in ourselves an inferiority complex that we brought with us. And therefore, for us to become American was a quick process.

The second and third generation of immigrants who came after ’60s and ’70s were very conscious of their identities, unlike the assimilated. They were the resisting type in the third option that was open. And there was also the first option -- there’s a minority there. In other words, what we have is a very mixed picture.

There are those Muslims who change their names, who became, you know, Farnaz (sp) became Jamie, I don’t know, all different names, to become part of the American social universe. And there are those now, this same Jamie that I’m talking about, is now again Farnaz, because she has realized that no, that was too quick to give up that identity. So there is a reversal of that taking place.

In other words, there was a pressure at one time. And with America becoming even more aware of multiculturalism now. I think we were, in ’80s and early ’90s, we were paying lip service to multiculturalism. Now we are serious about it. In the universities, at least, we can say that we really are paying attention to multicultural identities.

As yet, we are not as Canadians though. We haven’t reached that level, whereby we do accept people in their own cultures and do live with them. And there is also, there are problems. The European problem is very distinct, that the Muslims have refused to integrate. And they have created a kind of a different citizenry in the community. So there are problems and issues.

I think the picture is more complex than the way I presented it. I think there was some kind of oversimplification of some of the data in the field itself.

MR. OEY SHERIBI: Oey Sheribi (sp), Georgetown University Law Center. I just have some comments about the -- I see you’re relating the vision between (inaudible) and these kind of things owed to God and owed to human beings, to secularism. Whereas I -- as far as I understand, secularism has evolved almost recently, after the context of the reformation, was in the Christians.

Why do you have to do the borrowing through a concept from the fourteenth centuries in order to form a newer concept? And especially all of the sensibilities that this has within the Muslim context, which actually, once again, feed into non-acceptance of moderate thoughts or views like yourself, back home? And why use the term secularism, if it was referenced to something that already has been in circulation for 14 centuries and has its own names?

DR. SACHEDINA: I’m using secularity and not secularism. Secularity recognizes the role of religion, whereas secularism does not have any reference point to the sacred. Secularity says, yes, religion is important and the government should be not interventionists in religion, but should respect it and should listen to it. Secularism says no, there should be no connection whatsoever.

So, what I am looking at is a function of secularity that is already accepted within Islamic system because there is already several communities living together.

Islam did not come in the vacuum of religions. It needed to build religion -- a relationship with all communities. The only thing it could do was to leave communities, in their religious affairs, as self-governing bodies, including Muslims themselves. And legislate and regulate the life that was between human beings, communities living together.

And I’m not importing -- I’m not imposing it at all. But I think it’s a new concept, in a way, looking back at what, practically, the Muslims did in the civilization. They did not follow the Byzantine model. They had the Byzantine model and they had the Persian Sassanian model. They rejected both of them. But they created their own system in the way they accommodated the variety of religions, variety of communities, and yet were able to regulate somehow, the life of the Muslim separately and in separate jurisdictions. I’m talking about jurisdictions, rather than separation of the complete world between them.

MR. RADWAN MASMOUDI: My name is Radwan Masmoudi. I’m with the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. I have one comment and then two questions. First of all, thank you very much for a very -- and excellent presentation, that I think is both authentic, but also revolutionary in Muslim thinking.

Just a comment about the need for accountability, you know, accountability to the people or accountability to God. You know, one aspect is, of course, to make rulers accountable to the people. And then the other aspect is to make the people accountable to God. Which I think is also very important, you know, in Islam and in democracy, that the people are not accountable to the ruler.

The ruler is not there to enforce religion or that ultimately we’re all accountable to God and that, you know, it defeats the purpose of religion to have the ruler represent God, in terms of making, you know, like you said, who’s praying and who’s not and who’s fasting and who’s not. So I think those both are very important components of accountability.

About the issue of the silent majority or the majority that is silent and about the fact that we have a minority of radicals that is outspoken and controlling the debate, especially at the mosques, I think. You know, the imams are very under-qualified. You know, I’m really shocked by the speeches that I’m hearing at the Friday prayers.

What can we do? I mean, is there something, you know, we can do, so that what I believe is the majority of the Muslims, American Muslims, becomes more vocal and more assertive in their rights and not being so intimidated by this minority?

And then the second point, or second question, is again, about the question of secularism, I think is very challenging. You know, you spoke at the UN. Of course, the UN is -- yeah, it’s a secular organization, I mean, secular governments. But you know, Muslim people are still very much, you know, anti-secular or afraid of secularism. You know, I was surprised, in the Arab world -- I think in the Muslim world in general, with the exception possibly of Iran and Turkey, secularism is very unpopular. You know, people are very afraid of it.

I don’t know about Iran. I hear that secularism is gaining popularity in Iran. Certainly in Turkey it’s also very popular. But in other parts of the Muslim world, even secular parties and secular leaders don’t want to use the word secularism or secularity.

How do you make the argument -- or how do you answer those who say that Islam is a way of life, that Islam is also about politics, that Islam, you know, also wants to govern? Because there are rules in the Koran about governing and about who does it and all that. How do you answer all these challenges?

DR. SACHEDINA: I think one of the -- I use this -- normally, I do get this question, by the way. That how can you have these separate jurisdictions when there is no such separation and there is actually integrated system that is given to humanity to follow at all levels of their life?

I think, the way I approach it is this, that true, there is an integrated view or vision of the religion’s role in human life. But certainly religion -- and certainly religion has a role in the public sphere. But we need to define the role of religion, whether it is to guide the community, to give the guidance that is necessary, or to dominate the public mind by controlling the way they think about religion.

This would then be the political area because when you deal with politics, you are talking about the empowerment of the group, empowerment of the entity and its ability to exact obedience. Whereas, religion says, la ikraha fi d-dini, there is no compulsion, there’s no coercion in the matters of religion.

So on one hand, if you said there’s no compulsion, no coercion, then it has to simply persuade. Therefore, our legal scholars used to say, there are two kinds of ordainments -- ordinances: the [Speaks Arabic] and the [Speaks Arabic]. There are those ordainments, which require obedience without question -- five times a day you must pray. This is your obligation from God.

But you have [Speaks Arabic], women are not covering themselves. Should you impose them? The sharia says no, you should persuade them. You can’t impose it on them. Because it is dealing with public morals, therefore, you will talk to them, you will educate them, you will train them, and then, if they have the will, they will do it. Otherwise you can’t do it.

So, you have this -- there was a lot of discussion in Iran when the hijab was being imposed, for example, the covering. And the scholars were divided. They said, you know, hijab is a matter of [Speaks Arabic]. That means it is commanding the good, forbidding the evil. Therefore, it has to be [Speaks Arabic]. That means you have to do the guidance of the people, tell them, train them, but the Mullah said no. If we leave it to them, they will never do it. So, they enforced it. In other words, you have certain powers that are a vested interest, and therefore, I think it is very important to keep the two areas distinct.

The role of religion in the public area is ethical. The religion must look at the government and criticize it and make it aware of its shortcomings. If there are policies that are contradicting the normal sense of the normality of life, norms, then it should be able to speak out against the government. And the government must listen.

Now, for whatever reason, if they want to implement it or not, they must give religion a voice in the public sphere. And it is a voice of guidance. If they don’t give it, then religion will demand the voice of governance. That’s what is happening in the Islamic world. Because religious people were always outcast -- they were put aside, they are now coming back, I think very viscously, saying that we will control you. We’ll make you work the law of Gods. And I think that’s what we are seeing.

MR. WALTER BERNS: Walter Berns, American Enterprise Institute; Professor Emeritus of Government, Georgetown University. I want to ask a question and then I want to explain why I’m asking the question. My question is my particular version of every other question that’s been asked here today.

The question, quite simply is, is there a first-class Islamic university in the world today anywhere? I ask that question, because I don’t think there’s a first class Catholic university, at least in this city, although normally, there are two Catholic universities.

Georgetown, for example, you can say anything, except you cannot say anything about Catholic doctrine. So, when a Cardinal came here, oh, a month ago, he’s one of the persons rumored to have a good shot at being Pope, ended up by making some judgments about -- based on Catholic doctrine, 100 professors walked out. The Dean who sponsored his appearance on the campus apologized and the students have been in a uproar ever since. I draw the conclusion that is impossible to be a Catholic university.

DR. SACHEDINA: I think it will be also impossible to have an Islamic university, with all the standards that we apply in the academic work. Because most of the research in the Islamic universities is end-oriented research. And that’s not what we do in the academia.

At least we claim to be objectively doing something, in which we have no Western interest as such. Now, that’s all questionable when it comes to social sciences, but certainly I think end-oriented research is not something that can produce what I call unbiased scholarship. We don’t have that scholarship as yet. We don’t have that kind of institution as yet.

We used to have good universities in the Islamic world, which created its own thinkers and intellectuals, but that was a short while. The moment we defeated rationalism, we defeated the entire enterprise of scholarship. And today we are still plagued by it, by anti-rationalist attitudes, anti-historical attitudes.

I taught a course in the University of Ferdosi, in Mashhad, to the Ph.D. students on methodology of how do we study religion in North American universities. And the students sometimes were shocked that that’s how we study religion.

But interestingly enough, I found -- there were 27 students, 22 women and five men, Ph.D. students, in Theology. The 22 women had read Derrida, Foucault, and many of these Western critiques of religion and they knew the arguments. And they were far more liberal than the men were in the class, by the way.

So, you have a variety of students who are taking part, but the university is really searching for a source of epistemology that could be rational. It is very end-oriented. Islamic world universities are all controlling the minds. Like any religious university would do, you know. I don’t know what the Yeshiva University does in New York. I don’t know.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Explain to us, Professor Sachedina, please, to explain, you mentioned that there are two ways, of one persuasion, you say [Speaking Arabic] and the other one was, like, you know, Malawi [Speaking Arabic], yes. And I was wondering, so are you suggesting that there is no way in the Islamic world view that actually, that the religious community would be persuaded not to Irshad (sp) or not to -- okay, on the specific issue of hijab, I was wondering how about if women are persuaded to have hijab, even if they don’t want to have hijab? Is this against your thinking of religious modernity?

DR. SACHEDINA: (Inaudible) question. What exactly is your question?

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: You mentioned about hijab and you said there are two ways of looking at it. One is that, you know, everybody has to be forced to have the veil. And the other way is you could persuade people to have a veil. But then also, I think, embedded in your view should be that, so therefore, women would not be persuaded. Would that be acceptable or it is not acceptable? I was just wondering, you know, what you think?

DR. SACHEDINA: A personal question, rather than an academic one. Academic question would be in terms of -- there are two kinds of ordinances in the sharia law and the sacred law of Islam. One type of ordinance says that it must be obeyed under all circumstances. The other one says, that no, people need to be persuaded about it. All matters of social relationships come under persuasion. Whereas, all relationships with God come under our obedience.

Now, neither God stands with a whip in his hand, saying if you don’t pray, I’m going to hit you, nor does the government -- nor should the government do the same thing, that if you don’t obey to this persuasion, then we’ll hit you. I think you could have extremes on both ends.

But hukama (sp) sharia, what we call the rulings in the sharia or the ordinances of the law, are of two kinds: one in which obedience is unquestionable and the other one in which there should be persuasion. I am engaged in a bad business, I should not be selling alcohol. I can be persuaded by the government, that please don’t sell it. This is not good, you are spreading corruption in the society. Now it’s up to me.

Now the government might say well, you know, I think you’re too dangerous for this community. We’ll stop you from selling it. It’s what the government does is government’s work. But the sharia itself makes very clear between the two kinds, I think, ordinances.

MR. SVEND WHITE: Svend White, with the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. We appear to have infiltrated this event. But, of course, Dr. Sachedina happens to be our Chairman of the Board as well, so it’s a pretty thorough infiltration.

I just want to make one comment, basically to follow-up on your comments regarding Mr. Bernstein’s question about recent events, such as the recent arrest of Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, so on, etc., and the impact on the Muslim community. And then a question/comment, critique, regarding some of your comments about the American Muslim community, as someone who’s raised Muslim in Boston, the last 31 years.

Regarding the -- you observed the tactical concern of the risk of discrediting moderate reformist, so on, etc., in the Muslim community, which outed, in the public eye, in the eye of the community at large, which I would certainly agree with.

But I think there’s an even more serious concern, more strategic and tactical, of the current trend of essentially painting Muslims with such a broad brush, the very serious and fundamental distinctions in terms of political orientations. And essentially, extremists are being lumped in -- well, moderates and just legitimate activists are being lumped in with extremists. And that is the far more serious threat to the American Muslim community’s healthy political and cultural development.

When a moderate Muslim activist, who just happens to disagree with the status quo in some respects, is automatically painted with the same brush as a real extremist, that’s the greatest threat I can imagine to the Muslim community, because we’ll just circle the wagons and dissentingly, you know, the reactionaries will win the day politically within the community. And then there’s zero chance for reform.

But regarding your observations about the American Muslim community, I guess if you will, as they say in academia, I’d like to interrogate your notion of modernity. It’s pretty commonplace in post-modernism studies, multicultural studies, so on, etc., to posit that modernity is essentially a fragmentation of identity, an inherently jumbled, if you will, state of being culturally, linguistically, religiously, intellectually, and so on, etc.

So I guess, you know, as Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes an outfit is just an outfit. I am not comfortable with the drawing conclusions about sort of ideological or philosophical rejections of modernity -- whatever that is. I’m not even sure we’ve established what that is, in this context, from the dress of a person.

My wife was just at a conference -- at a Muslim conference. Hopefully, she’ll forgive me for citing her example. One day she wore a suit. The next day she happened to wear a salwar kameez (sp), because she hadn’t happened to pack enough clothes. She was certainly not making a -- Pakistani dress, outfit -- she certainly wasn’t making a philosophical statement.

So I guess I’m concerned with -- there’s an inevitable shorthand that we have to use in these contexts when we’re talking about these complex realities, but I’m also concerned about potential assumptions behind that.

The other thing, regarding the Muslim community and to kind of maybe grossly oversimplify what you said, but the assumption that we’ve been remote-controlled by Wahhabism or petrol dollars, which actually I see as more important than actual ideology -- the actual money.

I guess I’m curious what your opinion is of my slightly different take on it? I certainly -- last thing I would do is minimize the importance or the very -- the negative impact of Wahhabism, Salafism, petrol dollars, in the development of the Muslim community. I actually think it’s a terrible factor. I think it’s actually far more serious than most people realize currently -- in ways which aren’t being discussed in the long run. But at the same time, I think it also has to be discussed as a symptom as well as a cause.

And my concern is when we kind of -- when we frame it as simply the Iran community from afar, we’re actually hiding -- we’re ignoring very serious factors, such as the fact that many people don’t know that they’re functionally Wahhabi, if you will. It’s not a matter of someone signing a doctrine or a catechism and saying I am Wahhabi, I am Salafi, what have you, if I believe this. My greatest concern is many Muslims don’t know where from whence their ideas have come, due to the influence in Muslim media and educational curricula. So I guess I’m concerned with -- by framing it this way, I think we might be missing the forest for the trees. So, respectfully, thank you.

DR. SACHEDINA: You made very important points. And I think you made me think, and I certainly appreciate the distinctions that we ought to make. Modernity, I do submit that there is a large context to it when we use the terms. And sometimes those of us who are writing on these issues are not very careful, I think, including myself, in making it very clear where do we come from when we do refer to certain terminology that we have inherited in our reading and discussions and we have been talking about it for ages now.

I am 61 years old and I can say that I’ve been reading about it or discussing it for last 45 years. At least that’s the shortest time I can think of. These are the issues that we have been confronted with, from the time Pakistan was coming into being and secularism was being discussed and rationalism was being discussed and the relevance of the Islamic law was being discussed by the founders of Pakistan. The Muslim identity was being discussed and how exactly should we define -- all these things, they boiled down to our, what we call, what Kendall Smith would call it, we are part of these global modernizing communities.

And we know what is happening to us. We are questioning authority. We are questioning traditions. And we don’t call ourselves, necessarily, moderns or traditionalists. We don’t label ourselves. But we are engaged in the large issues of loss of identity, displacement of identity. And all these things are important.

But, I think what has made it even poignant at this time in history is that we are -- Muslim community has not allowed an intellectual debate, within the community to take place. There is very little dialogue within the community taking place about those who agree and disagree. Usually those who are seen as radicals are not even part of the community, so to speak. So you have a problem in the community.

When we talk about Wahhabism -- and here I apologize to my other friends, Arab Muslim friends, that I think that in the history of Islam in North America, Arab Muslims have played a very interesting role. Being an Arab and being a Muslim was always regarded as a level of authentic and authenticity. So whenever there were questions and debates in the community, the Egyptian Muslims or the Jordanian Muslims or Saudi Muslims always took the lead.

And many a times they were all talking about the same things because they were all rejecting traditionalism that was not pure enough. And they wanted Salafism, and yet they were not adding defiance as such. But we saw something that they would open in the Muslim community across the board -- certain attitudes, certain ways. And nobody said that we were Wahhabis or Salafists in that sense. But Arabic Islam somehow was closely connected with the Salafi movement. And you’ll find that in the writing of Sayyid Qutb who came here, who noticed these things, this is what he sees here.

So, I think there’s a major battleground at the moment between South Asian Muslims and the Arabic Muslims -- Arabic-speaking Muslims because Arabs have claimed superior claim on Islam. And even in the conferences, when they go to the Muslim conferences, the Arabs have demanded that they be given a special voice, because they represent an authentic voice within Islam. And all this has to do with partly -- not the petrol dollars, but I think it is a new kind of assertion of leadership in the community at the moment.

We are really -- we need to look at various factors. And I -- as I’ve said, there’s a tendency with academicians to simply oversimplify it. But what we have recognized as the symptoms, have deeper roots and they need to be addressed by the communities concerned. And we really need to look at it very carefully, theologically, legally speaking, and also ethically, we need to look -- and also ideologically speaking, one of the, I think, impacts of the modernity is, religion becoming ideology and how exactly that works out with self in the community.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Inaudible), Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. And I know you’ve already touched on this, but I was wondering if you might be able to elaborate on a bit more, the role of religion. You talked about the role of religion needing to be in the area, primarily, of guidance and not so much governance. And I can definitely agree with this, especially in the context of human rights.

But I’m wondering how we can really overcome this challenge within the greater Muslim community, on how to address this issue? Because many seem to see guidance and governance and going together, in that they especially look to the history, often times erroneously, but they look at it with nostalgia. And I’m wondering how can we, kind of, overcome this challenge. And you talked about addressing the UN and mentioning this with the different foreign ministers. How did they react to that and what was their response?

DR. SACHEDINA: They had time to challenge and did not challenge, by the way. They had time. There was at least 25 minutes for them to question, but they did not. But after the talk was over, they did come to me and they said this was important and we need to talk about it in our own countries, would you come? So that was where we stopped.

But I think what we have is the lack of historical studies in the Muslim community. Muslim community will reject history, outright, as being too subjective and nothing that would really please our Golden Age image because we have imagined history to be Golden Aged. And to bring out the community from there we need a lot of educational work to do. It’s only when we can teach our children and our youths that these histories were not all fine and dandy, there were some problems there from the very beginning of the history. I think unless we do it, we will not be able to overcome this idea of religion and politics being connected.

Religion and politics were connected at some point. The governance aspect was left to the people. The religion was guiding the governance aspect, rather than governing itself. Because the Koran is very clear. When it says to the Prophet, [Speaks Arabic], you are supposed to give them the message. You are not an overseer over them. Leave them alone. When they come to me I’ll judge them, as God says.

Now, if that idea is pushed to its logical conclusion, then we see very clearly, that the role of the prophet as a religious guide, is to deliver the message and leave the people alone. They can be guided, they can be persuaded and leave them alone. But when it comes to dealing with issues that are socially, very important politically, then you keep those religious values on the sidelight as a torch over what you are doing and you still are able to make the positions (?) within the specific cultural and social context.

Many of these -- you see when you look at the human rights, if we are going to follow the Koranic injunctions about women, in Sura number four, what the Koran says about women, and if you take those verses literally, it leads to the enslavement of a woman. There’s no punishment for men.

Now she’s got new shoes (?). When disobedience from a wife happens, a husband has a right to ultimately separate her and beat her up. Now if you are going to take it to the logical conclusion, the way the extremists are saying, then you might close the door completely, to the universal application of the specific guidance of the Koran that is there.

But take it in the historical context. Take it in the tribal-cultural context, where there was a lot of importance given to the honored position of a woman within the tribe. She was the one who negotiated the owner of the tribe. Then you have a problem that if the woman has a boyfriend outside the house, then the whole family is going to suffer. That’s the meaning of the shoes (?), that she has another man outside the house and she needs to be controlled. How exactly to be controlled is taken out of the context.

And the Prophet is seen as a person, so a Muslim in Los Angeles comes to Khaled Abou El Fadl and tells him that, look, the Koran says I can beat her up. And he says -- what Khaled Abou El Fadl is saying, that no, the Koran is talking to the Prophet, not to you. The Prophet is an institution. And he needs to establish an institution to take care of the justice or injustice that is done to the family. You as a person cannot take the law in your hands.

Now, when you look at this, this is a historical reading of the Koran. Today, if we remove history from the Koran, there’s no way to come back to the Koran for any valuable inspiration that is relevant in the human -- in the gender relationship, let’s say. The Koran says, well, [Speaks Arabic], she has the rights in relation to her obligations. But a man has an overriding right, because he earns.

What if the woman earns? Does the balance tilt towards the woman? Can we have even a conception of a woman could be the manager of a man’s life? Well, when I was studying, my wife was the manager of my life. As a poor registered student, she was working and she was feeding me. So she made the decisions and I was obeying, as such. Now, is this against the Koran or is it a reality of the situation?

So there is realism -- more realism in the Koran, with the communities refusing to accept. It’s idealizing the specific instances and universalizing it. We’ll have a problem in the human rights. We’ll have a large problem in human rights if you don’t look at the Koran with that kind of vision of history. So we need to read history very carefully and honestly.

DR. FRADKIN: Pretty soon we should let you off the hook and go on to some refreshments. I wanted to ask one question, but proceed it by two comments that were inspired both by something you said and also by what Professor Safi said.

What is the matter of teaching religion? I started out in life as a teacher of religion in the Department of Religion at Barnard and Columbia. And I taught a course on Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

And of course, some of my students -- I had Jewish, Christian and Muslim students and some of them, of course turned out to be pious and they gradually came to talk to me a little bit. And they all told me that they had received instructions from their rabbis, their ministers and their imams, not to take these courses, because religion departments were departments of Atheism, which I had to admit was true.

But then I wondered why they had taken these courses -- why they had been disobedient. And they explained to me, well, they had these very hard courses in math and physics, chemistry, and they needed a gut. So they thought that this would -- this is the easy part, because they know what religion is.

DR. SACHEDINA: That’s right. I mean, everybody knows it. I think my Muslim students take the course thinking that this is going to be Sunday school, you know, and we’ll get a straight A. And then they have to work and read and then they are shocked that they are supposed to read and they’re supposed to write these questions.

My own experience has been that there’s a general fear in the Muslim community of intellectualism, especially about religion. This is true with Christian students, too. Harry Gamble, my colleague, says that when he teaches the course, Historical Jesus, the students come and complain and they say, you have destroyed our innocent faith that we had from our childhood. So, it does happen, I think, to the Muslim students too and make them question certain presumptions that they have about their religion.

And it’s not easy to teach religion. I give them, first day of class, I tell them, why did you take the course? So they write a short paragraph. It’s very revealing that these young people -- mostly are Christian and the Jews. As I said, in 100 students, I have five, six Muslim students. So when they take this course they really are searching for something. It’s very interesting that they write in their comments that we are searching for something. So it’s not only academic interests. They have a larger interest in some kind of spirituality, you know. They have heard about Islam. They have media reports on Islam, so they want to know what it is. It’s been quite popular in that sense.

DR. FRADKIN: Two other things and then I will let you go. It was a question about the names. And it reminded me that I grew up in a time when -- I think you were referring to this fact, that you felt obliged, or felt they felt obliged to take, so called, non-Jewish names. And of course, it didn’t work. They all took that same name, so that everyone understood that Wendy, Mark, Michael, were Jewish names, not -- So, it sometimes works out in that way.

The question I wanted to ask is this, and it was really very much inspired by your last remarks, but also inspired by my experience as a student of Islamic thought, and particularly political thought. It always puzzled me that when I was -- when one studied Islamic political thought, one wound up ending up, more or less, in the fourteenth century. And that on the one hand, there was a puzzlement, why it essentially stopped?

But also, a great disability from which one suffers today, that the tradition of serious political thought lapsed and it has to be recovered. I don’t know why it -- I never understood why it lapsed. I don’t exactly know what would revive it. It does seem to me that the work of people like yourself is the precondition of that, just in the call for serious reflection along the lines that you were suggesting before.

I’ll close there, but -- .

DR. SACHEDINA: -- You know, Aliah Derozik (sp), the Egyptian, he was the daring one, to propose a thesis that God doesn’t want us to establish Caliphate. Caliphate is required at a time. He wants us to manage our affairs in the best possible way. And the Alamah (sp), the scholars in the Asharo (sp), were very angry with him, that why would he write that it was not necessary for us to reestablish the Caliphate, after Caliphate was, you know, abolished by Ataturk in Turkey?

I think we have lost opportunities to develop political thought in the modern times. Now we still go back to Afghana Sultania (sp), we go to Mawardi (sp), we go to Algazzali (sp), we go to Inabadja (sp), we go to these political theories in the past. And we have never thought that Aliah Derozik (sp) needs to be studied on his own, so that we can come to a much better understanding of what we need today.

We don’t need to revive -- if you remember Kendle Smith (sp) talks about it, that the problem with the Muslims is that they are always talking about Renaissance. That means they want to revive the past institutions. They don’t want to talk about reformation. Because talking about reformation means there’s something wrong. We need to correct it. And there’s no such thought process. There’s a thought process of reviving the past, making the sharia workable. Nobody says how exactly will it work, if there is no new methodology, if there is no new legal thought, how is it going to apply today? So, the homework that is more challenging is almost avoided.

Hassan Torabi (sp), here he speaks about, for example, [Speaks Arabic], we need very broad [Speaks Arabic]. But what exactly are you saying? Can you really work out a new theory that can supplant the old one? There isn’t anything of that sort going on.

So we really have failed to revive the true resources that we could really apply to work-out our own responses to the modern government, to the modern nation-state, or to the modern Parliament, how exactly our legislatures would work, what kind of system we would create.

And that lacuna is prevalent in the community at large. We find ambivalence in the Muslim community in general, towards political participation because they’re not participating actively in their own countries. And therefore, here they come, they wonder should we get into this contaminated area? And they leave it. We’ve been telling them, no, you should participate. It’s good for you. You should become part of the system. So it is a challenge, really.

DR. FRADKIN: Thank you very, very much, Professor Sachedina. Please join me in thanking him. And I hope many of you will stay around.