American Muslim intellectuals have a responsibility to be "candid, honest, and energetic" in addressing the problem of Islam’s relationship to democracy and the modern world, declared Abdulaziz Sachedina of the University of Virginia at the October 2 Center seminar "Dissension and Dialogue in the Post-9/11 American Muslim Community." A practicing Muslim educated at Aligarh Muslim University in India and Ferdowsi University in Iran before receiving his doctoral degree from the University of Toronto, Sachedina stressed that this is "an important time in the history of Islam." Muslims in North America have the opportunity to "rethink" what "religious vision" is appropriate in their new social and political environment, where they are "not living in a Muslim society."

The unfortunate response of many Western Muslims, Sachedina said, is to assert their communal identity by disengaging from political life and modernity. Fearing that their economic integration here might lead them "to dissolve in Americanism," an influential minority embrace the separatism and exclusiveness advocated by imams who worry about the dilution of their religion and culture. Such Muslim clerics, desperate to preserve "authenticity," refuse to recognize that "a living cultural tradition is always in the course of development." The Wahhabi attempt to create "a church of Islam" in fact distorts the central tenets of Islam.

Sachedina urged Muslim scholars and imams to stop avoiding the challenges that attend religious life in contemporary American society. He suggested that they build bridges to other religious communities by focusing less on Islamic doctrine and practice and more on the neglected study of Muslim ethics and the moral commitments they share with their non-Muslim fellow citizens. They need, furthermore, to confront the interaction of their own faith and history, of pluralism and exclusionary religiosity, of accountability to human beings and accountability to God. If Muslims were more open to their own scholarly heritage, they would discover that "functional secularity" is accepted in Islam and that the proper role of religion in political life is "guidance, not governance."

Center president Hillel Fradkin, who moderated the discussion that followed, pointed out that the problems many American Muslims face now—distrust and fear of los-ing their identity—are similar to those once faced by the Catholic community here. Awareness of this precedent might help them better negotiate these difficulties, he said. Much of the discussion centered on how moderate Muslim leaders might gain a stronger voice within the Muslim community and how they might revive the long-dormant Islamic tradition of serious political and moral reflection. Among those participating were Alli Beckman of the American Studies Program; Walter Berns of the American Enterprise Institute; David Bernstein of the American Jewish Committee; Rachael Eggebeen of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; William Elliott, Kent Hill, and Mohammad Latif of the U.S. Agency for International Development; Saba Ghori of the U.S. Department of State; Robert Leiken of the Nixon Center; Radwan Masmoudi and Svend White of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy; Sara Russo of Students for Academic Freedom; and Ayesha Sattar of the U.S. Department of Justice.