Akbar Ahmed, a renowned Islamic scholar and anthropologist, recently
toured the Muslim world with several of his students. He found that
Muslims abroad felt that they were not understood in the West, and
perhaps were being deliberately misrepresented by Western – and
particularly American – media.
Despite being well informed about US culture and politics, they knew little
about Islam in the United States and were amazed that Ahmed’s Muslim
students could wear hear covers and go to mosque. They were even more
impressed when one Christian student refused to enter a mosque because
she did not have a scarf to cover her hair; the incident made every paper in
Pakistan.
One radical ideologue at India’s Deoband University, author of a book that
seeks to justify killing civilians in democracies seen to oppress Islam, was so
impressed by the evident good will of the American group that he eventually
sought permission to translate one of Ahmed’s books into Urdu (the official
literary language of Pakistan). It argues for dialogue between Islam and the
West and is dedicated to a prominent Jewsih scholar.