The Relationship between the Muslim

World and the United States and the Root of

Islamophobia in America
Imam Feisal A. Rauf

precis
The problems between the United States and the Muslim world have nothing to do
with American values or American business. These problems are too often over-
simplified, but, if we analyze and sort them, we find that they fall into several identifiable
categories: political, economic/socioeconomic, identity, theological/belief, and percep-
tion. Breaking up larger problems into constituent and identifiable parts helps us care-
fully to consider each problem component and craft initiatives in each of these arenas or
spaces.

I appreciate the invitation to this important gathering of Evangelical and

Muslim leaders who are already committed to combatting human ha-
tred and Islamophobia in particular. In the name of the one God that we
bothChristians and Muslimsworship, recognize, and submit to, we
beseech God to bless and guide us and to inspire us with Gods wisdom,
compassion, love, mercy, and the ability to overcome the satanic or demonic
forces that have created so many problems both within and between our
faith communities.
I begin by saying that, unless we understand a problem and fully fathom
it, there is no way we can solve it. One of my most important lessons came
from a teacher who said, Understanding a problem is ninety percent of
solving it. Part of the problem that I believe has happened in this country,

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certainly before the attacks of September 11, 2001, and in their immediate
aftermath, is that many of the people who are responsible for shaping Amer-
ican policy did not fully understand the problem with which they were deal-
ing. We can consider that to be a general condition of many members of our
leadership, including many members of Congress, which has been most
frustrating to me and to those of us who know better and are trying to see
how we can help the situation.
As we all know, the prime reason for hostility in much of the Muslim
world toward America has nothing to do with American values or American
businessmuch of which is very popular in much of the Muslim world and
in the majority of Muslim countries. The hostility is due completely to
American foreign policy and the very heavy footprint, including the mili-
tary footprint, that the United States has in various parts of the Muslim
world.
I often like to make the analogy between how the U.S. dealt with Iran
and how it treated the Philippines, which was a comparable situation to that
of Iran. In Iran we had the Shah who was Americas guy in that country. In
the Philippines we had Ferdinand Marcos as Americas guy there. After
many years, both populations wanted a regime change, which is something
we Americans have the option of deciding on every four years. Peaceful re-
gime change in the U.S. is built in after a maximum of two presidential
terms, because Americans realized they did not want any president to accu-
mulate too much power. However, in projecting our foreign policy, we are
often insensitive to the desire of other populations to have these same
options.
Both the Iranian and the Filipino populations did not want their lead-
ers any longer, and in both cases the religious community and leadership
were actively involved in championing a regime change. While it is more
popularly known that the Iranian religious leaders, such as Ayatollah
Khomenei, were actively involved against the Shah, it is less well known
that in the Philippines the Catholic Archbishop was also very involved in
getting Marcos removed. He lobbied the Vatican to help persuade U.S.
leadershipat that time the Reagan administrationto effect a peaceful
transfer of government, thereby helping Corazon Aquino come to power,
supported by the military leader, General Fidel V. Ramos. Right after that,
the Philippine government effectively told the Americans: Thank you

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 Rauf The Muslim World and Islamophobia in the U.S. 191

very much. Now, we arent happy with your military base in Subic Bay in
our country. We dont like what your soldiers are doing to our young ladies
and to the morality of our people, so please remove your base from there.
The U.S. obliged.
The same sentiments expressed by Muslims have generally been met
with a very different treatment. That describes the basic reason why much of
the Muslim world has such animosity toward the U.S., which has supported
strongman regimes that have ruled in an authoritarian manner over their
populations. We have military bases in Bahrain, in Qatar, in the United
Arab Emirateswhich contributes to the sense that the U.S. government,
in projecting its policies toward the Muslim world, has not been sensitive to
the needs of the average person living there. Even today, Muslims who
would like to see American political values implemented in their own coun-
tries do not see a systematic, coherent, effective way of getting traction to-
ward achieving that.
Instead, they see U.S. drones killing innocent Muslims (what we call
collateral damage). It does not take much to create dangerous feelings of
hatred. In the film Fahrenheit 451, there is a scene in which one of our bombs
destroyed a home, and the wife survived, while the husband died. There is a
scene in which she looks into the camera (and if you understand Arabic, it is
very powerful) and says: What did my husband do to you that you killed
him? You destroyed my life! The powerful emotion conveyed in that scene
made me think to myself: If I were her fifteen-year-old nephew, what would
be the first thing on my mind right now? Probably revenge.
This is how we contribute to the cultivation of an emotion in a teenager
or young man, who in a moment like that can say, You know what, if I die in
the process of just getting revenge for my uncle, Ill be happy. There are too
many momentscall them collaterally caused momentsthat are a by-
product of our foreign policy, which has contributed to that most unfortu-
nate negative sentiment in many countries in the Muslim worldsufficient
to motivate the fraction of a fraction of a percent of the 1,500,000,000
1,600,000,000 Muslims in the world. We have our share of crazies. When we
think of the high school killings in this country, such as Columbine and
other incidents and what motivated some young kid to pick up a gun and
ammunition and go on a killing spree in a U.S. population numbering
300,000,000, it does not take very much to convince a few of those people

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among the world Muslim population to do something crazy, and even die,
for a cause much easier to rationalize.
So this is a primary issue for why you find more targeted hostility toward
the U.S. It gets complicated from there, because our allies get pulled in, and
then the rest of the story becomes increasingly complex. However, this is
one causal strand and a major point I want to raise.
The other important point to which I want to draw attention is the role of
U.S. Muslims. The majority of Muslims who have come to America really
want to see a better relationship between the U.S. and the Muslim world,
and they believe we can make a difference. The challenge, of course, is how
to structure that relationship, which I do not see that we have been very ef-
fective in doing. It was not just about having Muslim faces in the State De-
partment and such but about having people who know how to solve the
problems, people who can be effective interlocutors.
The problem between the U.S. and the Muslim world is complex, but it is
not rocket science. It is much simpler to solve than the problem of sending
humans to the moon or the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb.
We cannot send every physics teacher to Los Alamos to build a bomb. We
have to have the right people, the right combination of teams, and the right
strategy for solving each problem that needs to be addressed. They have to
understand the complexity of Americas enormous interest in the Muslim
world and factor that into their calculations. We have geopolitical interests,
economic interests, military interests. Knowing how to factor in and negoti-
ate these issues requires a faculty that embraces and comprehends the com-
plexity of the issues involved.
Much of what people like myself feel has happened is that the attempts
both to explain and to solve the U.S.-Muslim divide are characterized by a
sense of excessively simplistic thinking. The relationship is analyzed in a
way that is inadequate to address the complexities of the relationship. It is
like saying that the gender divide between men and women can be described
by saying that men are from Mars and women are from Venus; that is a sim-
plistic way of describing something. You cannot solve a particular problem
by simplistic one-l iners or analysis, and a lot of what exists is, I believe, far
too simplistic.
While I believe that part of the Islamophobia that exists in the U.S. is
due to factors beyond our control, there are also factors within our control

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as Muslims, and we Muslims have to admit and recognize that we are partly
to blame. God instructs Muslims in the Quran, Do not curse the gods (or
beliefs) of those who are not believers, lest they insult God out of their own
ignorance, out of their own unawareness [literally, do not curse those who
worship other than God, lest they insult God out of their unawareness]. 1
Muslim jurists have used this verse to argue that, if a person curses God as a
reaction to our cursing, then we are responsible for their cursing God. This
argument is also based on a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, wherein he
once told his companions that cursed is a man who curses his own parents.
When a companion remonstrated that they do not curse their parents, the
Prophet answered, When a man curses the parents of another man, and in
retaliation that man curses his parents, he was responsible for his own par-
ents being cursed. 2
I believe that we Muslims have been guilty to a huge extent of this kind
of unnecessary hostility, where the attitudes and behavior of Islamophobes
is, at least to some extent, a reaction against actions done in the name of
Islam by some so-called Muslims. We have our share of extremists, too,
which is why I have shared in many contexts that the real divide is not be-
tween Muslims and the West or Muslims and Christians but between the
moderates and the extremists of all faith communities/religions. The ex-
tremists really share a similar mindset that is repackaged in the vocabulary
and worldview of each belief. Packaging their extremism in Islamic or
Christian or Jewish or atheistic vocabulary, extremists have the same mind-
set and behave similarly.
So, the real challenge is how to get rid of extremism as a phenome-
non, as a mindset that thinks it has the exclusive truth. We challenged
atheistic extremism during the Cold War against the communist world
and won. How do we now combat Muslim extremism, packaged in Is-
lamic vocabulary? This is the battleor, rather, the wart hat we all
share together.
This raises the core question and issue before us in this conference: How
can moderate (how we all find this word inadequate!) American Christian
Evangelicals and moderate American Muslims work together? I do not

1
Muhammad Asad, tr. and explanation, The Message of the Quran (Gibraltar: Dar-
al-A ndalus, 1993), 6:108.
2
Sahih Bukhar Hadith, 5973.

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claim to have the complete answer to this, but I think this is the issue before
us, and I offer this as a conversation-starter for this conference. By exploring
how we propose to answer this will focus our attention and efforts on the
enormous game-changing things that we can do.
If we look at the problems between the U.S. and the Muslim world, we
find that the problems fall into several identifiable categories: We can look at
the problem of the West-Muslim world divide from a political lens, from
an economic/socioeconomic or identity lens, from a theological/belief-set
lens, and from a perception lens, which is shaped by education and the
media. Breaking up the problem into its constituent and identifiable parts
helps us to think about each and to craft initiatives in each of these arenas or
spaces. Of course, these spaces are not fire-walled from each other, because
they bleed into and feed each other.
It is critical that we also need to work on and in the media space, because
many perceptions are shaped today not only through education but also
through the media, which is a continuous means of educating and inform-
ing people and shaping their opinions of certain things. This is exactly the
algorithm or the methodology by which we at the Cordoba Initiative have
looked at the issues between America and the Muslim world. We have iden-
tified different aspects of the problem and have sought to conceive of proj-
ects that address each of these issues and determine who the players are who
need to be involved.
In the political arena, for example, it is well known that the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict has, since the very beginning of the birth of Israel, been
a major factor in alienating many Muslims toward America, because there is
a perception in much of the Muslim world both that America is beholden to
Israels bidding and that Israel has denied the Arabswho are predomi-
nantly Muslims but also includes Christian Palestinian Arabs their
rights; thus, this has been a constant irritant in aggravating Jewish-Muslim
harmony.
The third holiest site for Muslims, Al Aqsa in Jerusalem, known popu-
larly as the Dome of the Rock, is very dear to the hearts and minds of Mus-
lims. In recent months clashes have occurred, arousing several young people
to violence. As we have seen in the news recently, some Palestinians killed
some Jews, and the Israeli armed forces killed some Palestinians.

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I was told by one of my Palestinian friends that one young Palestinian

was running away from the settlers who were trying to kill him; he ran for
safety toward an Israeli policeman. The Jewish settlers yelled that this Pales-
tinian was a terrorist, and, believing them and fearing that he was out to
shoot them, the policeman shot him in self-defense. Imagine if you were this
young mans brother; how would you feel? Such incidents, whether true or
not, sustain the negative perception and hostility toward the U.S., where the
weaponry the Israelis use is manufactured. These continuing events make it
imperative that we solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for, unless we do so
and reduce our military footprint in the Arab and Muslim world, and until
the U.S. is seen as genuinely caring for the universal human rights of all
Muslims in the world, we are not going to get to first base. That is the politi-
cal dimension of the problem.
Then, there is the issue of identity. This is one of the things that we are
working on through our Cordoba House project, with the help of our mu-
tual friend, Dr. Abubaker Shingieti. The big challenge here is how we Mus-
lims evolve from being seen as alien to the U.S. and its culture to being part
of American society. How do we integrate ourselves into America? We have
unpacked that journey and its narrative into its components: the legal or ju-
ristic aspect and the cultural aspect, including culture, music, architecture,
and clothing.
Americans have already accepted and embraced our cuisine, because on
almost every block in Manhattan there are halal food carts. Today, many
Americans think of halal as a cuisine instead of as kosher, which is fine
with me. These are the avenues and ways that, as Americans begin to appre-
ciate and accept, the process begins of accepting our culture and integrating
ourselves into American culture. This is the same story that has happened to
both our faith traditions. Just as the Italianswho were mainly Catholic
and were called by derogatory namesbrought pizza and made it an Amer-
ican food, today pita, hummus, and falafel are increasingly considered part
of American food.
Just fifty-six years ago, when John F. Kennedy ran for president of the
U.S., many Americans were fearful that, as a Catholic, he would be subservi-
ent to the pope. Such was the fear then against Catholics. In this span of
time, the Catholic pope, starting with John Paul II, and now with Francis,

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received such heroic welcomes in the U.S. I gather if Francis were to run for
President of the U.S. today, he just might win! If, within the span of less than
a century, American attitudes toward Catholics have gone from deep suspi-
cion to warm affection, why should I not be hopeful that the same shift can,
and God willing will, occur between Americans and Muslims?
When Christianity spread from Palestine to those countries where it is
now the dominant faith, it took on the national identities of those countries.
There are Greek and Russian and Syrian and Serbian Orthodox churches,
the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church (the Episcopal Church
in the U.S.), the Dutch Reformed Church, and the Swedish Lutheran as dis-
tinct from the German Lutheran Church.
The same thing happened in Islam, too. Different schools of law devel-
oped, unique to each country, as Islam spread from Arabia to the ancient
cultures of Egypt, India, and China. Islam adapted itself in each of those
countries. When you compare Islam in Egypt to Islam in Turkey to Islam in
Pakistan and India, to Islam in Southeast Asia and in Sub-Saharan Africa,
you will notice how it has adapted itself to each of those cultures, to each of
the pre-Islamic systems of law. It has developed an architecture, an art, mu-
sical and literary forms, such that you could speak of an Indo-Pakistani
Islamnot in terms of creed, but in terms of culture, architecture, qawwali
music, and law. Even the Hanafi jurisprudence that developed in India dif-
fers from the Hanafi jurisprudence in Turkey. This history is the basis of
what we as Muslims need to do in America, to make our practice of Islam
here in America appear normative, not alien.
To summarize, the formula for how to move forward in combating
Islamophobia has several components:

1. Understanding the underlying causes of the problem and addressing/

solving each cause.
2. Understanding that our faiths are not the causes of the tension, but,
by learning about each other, we see that we have many important beliefs
in common. This has been the basis on which Doug Johnston has built the
personal relationships with key players on the other side of certain con-
flicts. This brings me to another instrument that we, especially Muslims
and Christians together, should deploy:

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3. The power of prayer. One of the things that Muslims are known to
do is pray five times daily, and one of the things that Christians are wont
to do is pray, light a candle, and perform ritual acts of prayer, supplication,
and intercession both with God and other human beings to live up to the
highest ethical imperatives of our faiths. We should not be shy to call on
and deploy our spiritual reservoirs, for, at the end of the day, that is what
enlivens our respective faiths and enlivens us as human beings.

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