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Index of Daily Report
Wednesday, October 22, 2003

COMMENTARY: Mississippi Muslims
By AKBAR S. AHMED
c. 2003 Religion News Service
(Professor Akbar S. Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at
American University in Washington, D.C., is author most recently of "Islam
Under Siege: Living Dangerously in a Post-Honor World," published by Polity
Press.)
(UNDATED) I would not recommend traveling in the United States on Sept.
11, especially if your name is Ahmed.
The security is so tight at the airports that it is difficult to breath.
The atmosphere crackles with tension. Announcements over the loudspeaker
systems every few minutes remind passengers to look out for
"suspicious-looking" packages left by suspicious-looking people. In the
meantime the media constantly remind us why racial profiling is essential to
identify "as suspicious-looking people" those associated with one particular
part of the world. So as not to miss the point, they even remind us that
none of the hijackers was a blue-eyed blond with a Scandinavian racial
background.

But I was on my way from Washington to Jackson, Miss., on a mission of
dialogue and was not discouraged. This was my first visit to Mississippi --
land of William Faulkner, Oprah, Tennessee Williams, Faith Hill and B.B.
King.
And when I arrived at Jackson my host, the Rev. Donald Fortenberry,
chaplain at MillsapsCollege, met me so warmly that all my fatigue and
anxiety vanished. MillsapsCollege is one of the finest educational
institutions in Mississippi. It provided intellectual and moral leadership
during the difficult days of the civil rights movement.
I had been invited to deliver a lecture -- "Islam: Challenge of the Past
and the Way Ahead After Iraq."
I had first come across the name Mississippi in Abbotabad in the hills
of north Pakistan where I studied as a boy. It was through an LP record of
Dean Martin singing Dixie songs. His rendering of "Mississippi Mud"
intrigued me. I also read Mark Twain with interest. I was fascinated by the
culture of the American South and its great river that seems to symbolize
American culture and history.

I was now, finally, in Mississippi almost half a century after I had
heard the name.
Before my lecture I was invited by the Muslim community to visit the
recently established International Museum of Muslim Cultures in Jackson. The
Andalusian arches, tiles and fountains created an atmosphere that reminded
me of the time in Muslim Spain when Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in
harmony. I was delighted to meet members of the Muslim community who
represented the main streams of Islam in the United States:
African-American, Arab and South Asian.
They came to my lecture at Millsaps and added to the dialogue that took
place that day.

"It would be difficult for me to over-emphasize how delighted we were to
have you on the Millsaps campus yesterday," Fortenberry wrote after the
event. "The size of the audience, which included many persons from the
Jackson community, as well as Millsaps faculty, staff and students, was all
we had hoped for and indicated, I think, the level of concern on our campus
about issues related to Iraq, our relationship to the Islamic world, and the
impact of these issues on the future. I have struggled to remember an
occasion when the prolonged applause and standing ovation so clearly
indicated deep appreciation for what a speaker had done."
Azam Mohammed, a board member of the museum and a South Asian Muslim,
wrote an article on the occasion of my lecture, "Happy to be a Muslim,"
which is revealing:
"I started wondering how deeply we Muslims were affected by Sept. 11 and
the following events. Those 19 hijackers were directly linked to millions of
Muslims around the world. ... Suddenly Islam came under attention and
Muslims were pushed under the spotlight. Islam became the topic of talk
shows. Muslims' values were ridiculed and Islam's prophet was insulted.
Books were written with the sole motive to propagate the popular
misconceptions of Islam. Muslim civilization and Islam became the adversary
of Western values."Sept. 11 affected all of us and in some ways Muslims have become its
real victims. The ghastly act of the 19 terrorists had become the prelude to
the death and destruction of Afghans, the invasion of Iraq, the massacre of
Gujarati Muslims in India, the plight of Chechens and Kashmiri Muslims.
"With these questions in my mind and a sense of hopelessness I reached
the auditorium at Millsaps' campus. The auditorium was packed with people. I
found a place on the steps facing the podium and settled myself for one of
the best speeches I would ever hear on Islam and Muslims in the present
context.
"Dr. Ahmed's presence and speech acted as a balm on our psychic wounds
inflicted by Sept. 11 and I believe it also gave the right perspective for
non-Muslim Americans to look on the Muslim world."
Azam said he felt uplifted by the dialogue. "His (my) confidence and
calmness in some way lightened my heart and that afternoon after a long time
I genuinely felt happy to be a Muslim."

For me, the compassion and concern for dialogue of the Rev. Fortenberry
and Azam Mohammed -- and that of the Mississippi Muslims -- gave me hope for
the future.
== 30 ==
Copyright 2003 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this
transmission may be reproduced without written permission.