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, D.C. His most recent book is “Islam Today: A Short Introduction to the Muslim World,” published by I.B. Tauris.)

(UNDATED) 2003 is of special significance to me. It is the year I reach 60 years of age.

It is a point in a person’s life when he or she raises the eternal questions: Why am I here? What is my role? How can I contribute to the sum of human understanding? And, finally, how long do I have?

No one can really expect an accurate answer for the last question.

As for the other questions, the terrible actions of the 19 Muslim men who caused unprecedented death and destruction on Sept. 11, 2001, have forced all of us to confront the answers. Their actions have plunged the world into what appears to be a violent confrontation between Western and Muslim civilizations.

This confrontation is now seeping into every country where Muslims live and affecting the lives of millions of people. There can be no more important task than that of creating better understanding between the two civilizations.

On my 60th birthday I reflect on the series of seemingly unrelated developments in my life, which led me to resign from the bureaucracy of Pakistan and head for Princeton University as a visiting professor in July 2000. I was delighted to be back in Princeton where I had spent a happy year two decades earlier at the Institute for Advanced Study.

After an idyllic year on campus I took up the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, D.C., in late August 2001.

A few days later the Muslim hijackers changed the world and my decade-long work of interfaith dialogue now appeared of urgent relevance.

I was on a roller-coaster ride appearing on an unending series of platforms to bring understanding between Islam and the West: from small campus classrooms, to groups of important policy-makers, to appearing on “Oprah” thrice. It has been a physically and emotionally punishing exercise. But it has also been rewarding.

After September 2001 so many central questions have been thrown up about Islam. Does Islam believe in democracy? Is Islam a tolerant religion? What is Islam’s relationship to the other world religions?

Although these questions are now widely asked everywhere, especially in the media, I had already raised them over a decade ago when I arrived at Cambridge University in 1988. It was to answer these questions that I launched two major projects: first, to understand and explain the compassionate nature of Islam, and second, to project a viable democratic model of Muslim political leadership.

The BBC six-part television series “Living Islam,” which I presented, was broadcast for the first time in 1993. It was based on my book “Discovering Islam: Making Sense of Muslim History and Society.”

The project that came to be called the “Jinnah Quartet” was completed in 1997-98. It was comprised of a feature film called “Jinnah,” starring Christopher Lee; a documentary, “Mr. Jinnah: The Making of Pakistan”; a scholarly book, “Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity”; and a graphic novel for children called “The Quaid: Jinnah and the Story of Pakistan.”

I had become interested in the question of Muslim leadership and its impact on Muslim society in the 1980s when I was commissioner in Baluchistan, the senior-most officer in the field. I had come to the conclusion that unless a strongly defined democratic model of leadership emerges in the Muslim world, it will be caught between ruthless military dictators and corrupt royal dynasties.

In the early 1990s I began to write and speak about Jinnah in opposition to alternative forms of political leadership in the Muslim world, including that of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. I warned of the coming storm that would engulf the world.

These projects made a global impact. Debate and discussion were created. I was praised and reviled. Some hailed me as the modern Ibn Khaldun, another Iqbal; others condemned me for being too keen to have dialogue with the Jews, Christians and Hindus.

The price for completing the projects was high. My health had almost collapsed and whatever little family savings I had were sunk into the projects. My family life was disrupted.

But the projects laid the foundations for serious interfaith initiatives in which I took part. I could not conceive of more important initiatives, particularly in the United States, where the dialogue between the Abrahamic faiths remains weak and underdeveloped.

Through the ups and downs of the last 60 years I have been sustained and inspired by my late father, a gentle and wise man, and by my saintly mother. My wife, children and grandchildren have been a constant source of joy and pride. Their love has been unwavering and unconditional.

I look back on the journey and am wonderstruck at how the seemingly unrelated and incongruous kaleidoscopic pieces of my life somehow fall into a pattern. I think of my birth in Allahabad, a small dusty town by the great Ganges river in the heart of what was then British India and a part of the British Empire on which the sun never set, and my life now in Washington, the grand capital of the sole superpower of the world.

Even as a growing boy I was aware of the rapidity with which the British Empire shrank and then disappeared and the equally amazing rise of the United States as the world power.

I think of my father who believed in the Sufi motto “sulh-i-kul,” or peace with all, and who inspired me to explore and project the compassionate nature of Islam. His example propelled me into the life-changing and irreversible commitment to dialogue and understanding.

I think of the journey of Zeenat, my wife, my companion and my friend for over half of my 60 years, who has helped me selflessly through my tumultuous life with her love, devotion and intelligence. I wonder at the distance she has traveled _ the princess from the conservative royal house of Swat, in the remote northern hills of Pakistan, actively committed with me on campus, in offices and in the different houses of God.

So while wishing myself a happy 60th birthday and pledging renewed vigor in interfaith dialogue and understanding in which I am involved I take the opportunity to utter my first words as someone who has just become a genuine elder citizen of the world: God bless you all.

DEA END AHMED