c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) What if, Akbar Ahmed asks, America had limited its military response to 9/11 to liberating Afghanistan from the Taliban and al-Qaida? What if, instead of invading Iraq and waging a global war on terror, the United States had expanded diplomacy and exchange programs with Muslim nations, and tried to win Muslim hearts and minds with hospitals, schools, and irrigation?

Those are the questions Ahmed, a former Pakistani diplomat and renown Islamic scholar at American University in Washington, tackles in his new book “Journey Into Islam,” a penetrating analysis of relations between America and the Islamic world.

Such an approach, Ahmed argues, could have spared America and the Muslim world the violence, turmoil and fear that both societies feel today, and that stands to get worse.

Ahmed argues it’s not too late _ if never more urgent _ for America to bring home its soldiers and send students and young professionals to the Muslim world as emissaries of American freedom, prosperity and compassion.

The argument has been made before. What distinguishes “Journey Into Islam,” however, is that it comes not only from Ahmed but also the fresh-eyed perspective of the four American students _ three non-Muslims, one Muslim _ who travel with him to nine Muslim countries over three months to hear Muslim views about America, terrorism, democracy and why Osama bin Laden is a hero.

What they find is sometimes disturbing and often fascinating. They walk away with the conclusion that even those we consider radicals can change their attitudes, but only if we talk to them.

“The only way to battle the intolerance and hatred in our world is with compassion and love as our intention rather than exclusion and hatred,” Ahmed said. “It is possible, but it requires a dramatic shift in our manner of thinking and acting as a world power.”

How America responds to the Muslim world depends on how Americans understand and define Muslims, Ahmed posits. So far, that task has been dominated by conservative commentators and think tanks that have little if any knowledge of the Muslim world.

The main purpose of the trip, Ahmed adds, was to determine how Muslims are “constructing their religious identities,” and therefore a whole range of actions and strategies, as a result of their current situation.

Ahmed divides the competing forces in the Islamic world into three categories:

_ Orthodox Muslims, who feel threatened by the West and respond with hostility and rigid interpretation of their faith;

_ Modernist Muslims, who also feel threatened by the West but whose corruption and authoritarianism cost them any public confidence they may have enjoyed;

_ Sufi Muslims, whose views of a common humanity and inclusiveness hold out the best hope for an East-West detente.

“If you look at the Muslim world through those three models, it will make much more sense,” Ahmed said in a recent interview. “In this crisis, the Sufi mystic still has a way of making sense of the world.”

Instead, Muslim identities are most commonly _ and incorrectly _ defined by tribal practices, many of which are condemned by Islam. Examples include the Taliban, which has infused Islam with revenge and misogyny; or the efforts of King Hussein of Jordan to rescind his country’s honor killing laws, which have thus far failed in the face of popular resistance.

“However divergent Islamic law may be from tribal custom, the tribal Muslim mind can always reconcile the two,” Ahmed writes.

At the same time, hostility to globalization and American military power is rooted less in Islam and more in tribal notions of defending the homeland from invaders. America’s problems in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ahmed concludes, “are the direct result of their failures to recognize or understand the tribal base of these societies.”

This can only be corrected when Americans take the time learn about the Islamic world, and approach its problems with compassion, Ahmed argues. Some critics call that appeasement, but studies and the personal experiences of Americans who have traveled to the Islamic world suggest that personal contact wins Muslim friends for America.

A 2005 survey of Muslims in Egypt, Morocco and Indonesia by the Council on Foreign Relations found that America has an opportunity to establish a “new dialogue” with Muslims and change minds.

“It will take listening, a humbler tone, drawing more attention to U.S. aid to development and reform, and agreeing to disagree on select security issues,” wrote the report’s author, Craig Charney.

Ahmed also takes Muslim societies to task, not only their leaders whose repressive policies have only made radical Muslims more popular, but also the corruption, inflammatory media and uneducated clerics.

“There hasn’t been a single Muslim scholar to emerge as a visionary theologian to ring in an Islamic Renaissance,” Ahmed writes, noting with open trepidation the spread and appeal of Islamic radicalism in places like Indonesia, where a rising number of Muslims support Shariah law and reject pluralism.

To save themselves, Muslims must rediscover the Sufi spirit of Islam, which emphasizes compassion and love for all mankind.

“I am firmly of the opinion that we as a world civilization are at a crossroads,” Ahmed said. “One road is taking us straight towards confrontation, violence, more killing. And the other road, which is what we are pointing to, is opening the way for dialogue and understanding, and possibly for friendship and bridge building. The choice is ours at this moment in time.”

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