c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Professor Akbar S. Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies and professor of international relations at American University in Washington. His most recent book is “Islam Under Siege: Living Dangerously in a Post-Honor World,” published by Polity Press.)

(UNDATED) Where do you begin dialogue in a time of war?

One answer, surely, is at the community level.

I saw this on March 30, almost two weeks into the war in Iraq, when the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md., and the Islamic History Society invited me to deliver their annual lecture.

About 200 people turned up for the event, which was followed by a lunch. I had also invited some distinguished non-Muslim friends including Doug Holladay, a former American ambassador, and Virendra Prakash, an Indian scholar-statesman. I was also pleased to see some of my students from American University in the audience.

March 30 was a Sunday and it unexpectedly snowed and rained. The winter conditions, however, did not affect the sense of goodwill that prevailed at the center. The warm hospitality of our hosts made up for the elements.

I had ended my talk with a strong plea for interfaith and intercultural understanding. It was a critical time for both the Muslim community and American society as a whole, I said, urging the Muslim leadership to reach out and encourage the understanding of their religion, culture and traditions. They needed to be much more active and visible in this endeavor.

The Muslim community has been in some turmoil since Sept. 11, 2001. Members are angry, anxious, uncertain and susceptible to rumors. Stories of a backlash against Muslims are circulating.

The conversations and discussion I heard that Sunday brought out the ironies and paradoxes that they observe: the promised “cakewalk” to Baghdad had become a slow and costly business; the uprising of the people of Iraq to welcome American soldiers on which much of the strategy was based did not take place; Saddam Hussein, universally perceived in the Muslim world as a brutal dictator, was suddenly being hailed as another Saladin, one of the greatest Muslim heroes of history; instead of the mass migration of refugees expected from Iraq, thousands of Muslims were heading into Iraq to fight against American and British forces.

And the greatest mystery of all still hung over the war: Was Saddam dead or alive? Had he been killed in the first strikes of the war?

Wars are always unpredictable and usually messy. This one is no exception. Long-standing allies of the United States appear to be shifting their position regarding support. Turkey, Egypt and even Pakistan have now officially said they cannot support the war. Egypt’s president warned that at the end of the war there would be a hundred Osama bin Ladens. Mullah Umar resurfaced from the depths of Afghanistan and issued a call to his followers to leave for Iraq and join the battle.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in the Muslim world from Morocco to Indonesia. The United States warned Iran and Syria _ and indirectly Turkey _ to stay out of Iraq. Interference would be seen as a “hostile act.”

As if the situation was not complicated enough, the very reporting of news itself became part of the war. The Arab media called the American and British soldiers an “invading” army. The American media resented this description. Their soldiers were there to “liberate” the Iraqi people. And anyone even appearing to be doubtful of the war effort could be in trouble.

When Peter Arnett, a noted veteran in the media, appeared on Iraqi TV and suggested the war plans had failed, there was a storm of protest in the American media. Commentators reviled him as a “traitor.” NBC had to apologize _ and fire him.

The mosques throughout the Muslim world were already echoing the idea of the clash of civilizations. The imams were quoting a saying of the Prophet of Islam:

“The hour of Doomsday (the end of the world) shall occur when the Euphrates unveils a mountain of gold over which the people fight.”

The saying of the Prophet for many Muslims appeared to be coming true: People were fighting for oil, which was interpreted as the modern equivalent of a mountain of gold.

All this has fed into the idea of universal conflict and chaos. Dialogue and understanding are needed more than ever before.

So where to begin? The answer has to be the community.

March 30 confirmed this for me. The war, it is becoming clear with every passing day, is not only being fought with tanks and missiles. Ideas and interpretations of global events are also in play. This was clear to me on that Sunday.

But when people sit face-to-face, talk and share a meal, even the most rigid of positions are opened up to the possibilities of dialogue. What is of common concern begins to emerge: the desire of everyone to see the safe return of the soldiers; the prayer that the suffering of the ordinary Iraqi women and children end and the nation join the world community away from the long shadow of Saddam; and, finally, that the feared backlash against Muslims in the United States needs to be checked by precisely such platforms of dialogue as the one we participated in.

DEA END AHMED