Islam and America: Changing Perceptions

William B. Milan, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan

Presented to the American Studies Conference Islamabad

Dr. Rais, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the invitation to speak to you today. I fondly recall my address to this same conference last year, my first public appearance in Pakistan as U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan.

I initially expected to be away on business today, which is why I suggested that my deputy, Michele Sison, speak to you. But I am a big believer in what you -- as educators -- do to fortify the Pakistani-American bilateral relationship, and when I found out that I could be with you after all today, I was very pleased. My apologies to Dr. Rais, who may not be so pleased because of the logistical difficulties I have caused him in preparing the program for today's sessions.

Often, as diplomats, we are called upon to formulate new policy -- that's a lot of fun -- or to reinvigorate old policy and push it in new directions. But today I would like to try to do something we are perhaps not always so good at, and that is to follow up on an ongoing issue, in this case the important dialogue we began at this conference last year, on Islam and America. You may remember that the address I delivered last year was entitled "Islam in America," and I recall that you had a panel -- as I see you do again this year -- exploring the issue.

Follow-through is always a good management practice, but I will admit that I am at least partly motivated to return to this topic by two things: 1) recent events in Pakistan; and 2) the results that have just been released from a recent opinion poll in Pakistan. I believe these two things are integrally related, and I will explain why as we go along.

The poll queried a sample group of Pakistanis on their views of several different countries, including the U.S. I would understandably have liked to see a more positive overall view of the United States emerge from the results, but what most concerns me is the fact that the U.S. was perceived by at least 30% of the sampling as posing "a major threat to Islam." One might be tempted to chalk this up to the misconceptions of the less-well educated, except that 46% of the better-educated respondents shared this view.

I bring this up with you today, not because I have the slightest reason to believe that you share those views -- in that sense I am truly preaching to the choir -- but because I want to make you aware of the problem and enlist your help in solving it. You are the professionals who have been trained (or are being trained) to educate your compatriots about America, about its literature, culture, history and system of government. Despite all your efforts, however, these negative and erroneous images of the U.S. persist, and I believe they are damaging to the Pakistani-American relationship.

What are the sources of this perception that America is anti-Islamic? Certainly the treatment of Muslims living in the U.S. is NOT one of them. As I pointed out last year, the Muslim community in the U.S. numbers some 7 million and is thriving. There are over 1,200 mosques in the U.S., and we were fortunate enough last year to have a wonderful exhibit at the American Center, entitled "Designed Mosques in North America," which showcased some of the Muslim architecture that is transforming America's cityscapes. If you missed it, let me encourage you to visit the U.S. Embassy home page and check the link entitled "Islam in America." We have downloaded many of the photographs from the exhibit there and have also compiled a wealth of information detailing how American Muslims practice their faith. There are copies of the U.S. Embassy home page and the "Islam in America" home page on hand to help those of you interested find the URL's on your computers at the university or at home.

In addition to the exhibition, the American Center arranged for two American Muslims of note to visit Pakistan last year, Abdurahman Alamoudi, the former President of the American Muslim Foundation, and Dr. Azizah al-Hibri of the University of Richmond. Both shared the view that some of the most exciting scholarly work being done today in Islamic studies is being carried out in the U.S., and praised the freedom that American Muslims have to practice their faith.

Ironically, American academia may bear some of the responsibility for this strange notion that the U.S. is anti-Islamic. It was an American professor, Samuel Huntington, who initiated the debate about the "Clash of Civilizations" in his now-famous treatise by that same name. I don't think much of this theory. The country I represent, the U.S., is itself a society where different cultures have mixed and blended for two hundred years now -- not always without some rancor and conflict -- but the history of our country demonstrates that people can learn to get over their differences and live together peacefully and harmoniously.

I believe that the primary source of erroneous view that America is anti-Islam is a perception -- exacerbated by negative propaganda -- that Islam is a monolithic force and that hostility toward one Islamic country or group is hostility toward all Islam. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Because the U.S. resists the predations of an aggressive, hegemonic, international pariah such as Saddam Hussein does not mean that we are hostile to Islamic nations such as Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Mali, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, to list a few only, not to mention Pakistan. In fact most Islamic States are our friends. Because we oppose all terrorist organizations, as their primary method of operation is to wreak violence on innocent people, including terrorist groups that purport to be acting in defense of Islam, does not mean that we are hostile to all Islamic organizations. We have no quarrel with the many that are not terrorist and eschew violence and terrorism. We are as strongly opposed to the provisional wing of the IRA or the Red Guards as we are to Osama bin Laden and his organization, Hamas, and Abu Nidal.

The clash then is not between America -- or the West -- and Islam; it is between America -- joined by all those who believe in liberal, open, peaceful societies that serve and protect human dignity and human values, human rights, civil rights, eschew violence as a way of settling disputes, and believe in the peoples' right to rule themselves -- AND those few countries and organizations that prey on their own people or their neighbors and/or use violence against innocent people to make political points -- be these points valid or invalid.

The fight, therefore, is against pariah states and terrorists, not against most governments or people, and certainly not against Muslims, or Christians, or Jews, or Hindus, and so on. The United States will relentlessly pursue the countries or organizations that commit aggressive or terrorists acts, no matter what their nationality or religious faith, and no matter where they are, be it in Afghanistan or Ireland or Mexico.

I am especially eager to lay to rest the myth that the U.S. is hostile to Islam and Islamic peoples, and I hope as specialists on American Studies I can rely on your support. I won't claim that America's foreign policy record is unblemished and without mistakes, but I can categorically refute the notion that we allow religious considerations to determine that policy. As a multi-ethnic society which has enshrined Freedom of Religion in its constitution, that is simply impossible.

The values I outlined earlier on which all liberal, modern societies agree I believe are shared by Islam: freedom, tolerance, respect for human and civil rights, respect for others' views. Sometimes in our past, all of our countries have departed from some of those values; but always there is some great man acting in the face of traumatic events who brings us back to them.

In America such a transformation came from Abraham Lincoln -- who I personally believe is the greatest American. Lincoln redefined America, set it on the path it follows today, restored the full range of its values, made it a new country.

This is epitomized by his Gettysburg Address, the most revolutionary and startling statement in our history, and only 272 words long. It took Lincoln only about three minutes to deliver the Gettysburg Address, yet its impact remains profound and fundamental 136 years later. Let me quote from Garry Wills' well-known history:

"Lincoln is here (in Gettysburg) ... to clear the infected atmosphere of American history itself, tainted with official sins and inherited guilt. He would cleanse the constitution. ... He altered the document from within, by appeal from its letter to the spirit. ... The crowd (in Gettysburg) departed with a new thing in its ideological luggage, that new constitution Lincoln had substituted for the one they brought with them. They walked off, from those curving graves on the hillside, under a changed sky, into a different America. Lincoln had revolutionized the Revolution, giving people a new past to live with that would change their future indefinitely.

Lincoln does not argue law or history. ... He makes history. He came to change the world, to effect an intellectual revolution ... he called up a new nation out of blood and trauma."

"He called up a new nation out of blood and trauma." Could there be any better description of the birth of Pakistan or of the historical legacy of its founder Quaid e Azum, Mohammed Ali Jinnah. And Jinnah, I am told, found inspiration in Lincoln.

Quaid e Azum endeavored, as Lincoln did, to set out a vision for the traumatized, divided, fragile nation he did so much to create. This was not a new vision as I understand it -- as Lincoln's vision of America was not new -- but a restatement of fundamental tenets of his religion. In his defining speeches of August 11 and 14, 1947m he is said to have set out a vision of an Islamic state, tolerant, equitable, compassionate, and free from nepotism, and corruption.

I am not a scholar, and I do not wish to engage in debate with scholars on the nature of Islam, or any other religion. But it seems clear to me that the principles that Jinnah laid out for his newly created country in August 1947 are the same principles that Lincoln laid out for his war-torn, ravaged nation in November 1863 to bring it out of the national nightmare of civil war and to transform the terrible legacy of slavery into an authentic nation of free people.

Neither of these two great men lived long enough to give the visions they enunciated full shape and impetus. Both their nations have at times drifted from those visions and struggled to return to them. Now we have come to another break, another discontinuity in Pakistan political history, which at the same time is another opportunity to move back toward the vision of its founding father.

Their two visions, so compatible, so profound, are a firm foundation, I believe, to continue to build a rich mutual understanding between our two nations and our two peoples. They demonstrate that America and Islamic Pakistan have similar value systems despite their cultural divergences. If we -- and I mean primarily you, those responsible for teaching the Pakistani people about America -- can build upon this common base, we can soon eradicate all the erroneous perceptions held by the people of both countries.

And this is what I would like to propose for our relationship with Pakistan. I would like to suggest, as I did last year, that we focus on what we have in common and fortify the academic, commercial, cultural, and political ties that bind our two nations. Especially in regard to religion, let us focus on the values that unite us -- and there are plenty of them -- rather than indulge in empty theories about the clash of civilization conjured out of thin air.