Muslims in the United States

Abstract

This event, co-sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the International Institute of Islamic Thought on May 11, 2005, was convened to determine which American Muslim scholars are influential in the Muslim world. The first panel, “Assessing the Current Influence of American Islamic Thinkers on Islamic Thinkers in Asia and the Arab World,” featured Osman Bakar (Georgetown University), Tamara Sonn (College of William and Mary), and Joseph Lumbard (Special Advisor to his Majesty the King for Interfaith Affairs, Jordan). Bakr, in his “Competing Visions of Islam in Southeast Asia: American Muslim Scholarship as a Major Shaping Factor,” dealt with Indonesia and Malaysia and said that the main question was how much of the contemporary world should be incorporated into the Islamic system, and how much tradition should be preserved. He also elaborated upon the phases of western and Middle Eastern Muslim scholars in Indonesia. In her “The Declining Influence of American Muslim Scholars in Pakistan,” Sonn stated that whereas Isma`il al-Faruqi, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Fazlur Rahman had been popular in Pakistan during the 1980s, by 2003 this was no longer the case due to the current realities. She discussed the importance of cassette recordings, which focus on “us vs. them,” the suffering poor vs. the wasteful elite, human rights, and believers vs. non-believing conspirators (e.g., Jews, Hindus, Ahmadis, Washington, and [maybe soon] the Isma`ilis), among the largely illiterate masses. What needs to be done is to spread literacy so that more Pakistanis can read their own scholars, such as Iqbal. In addition, popular discourse needs to be taken seriously. As Lumbard could not attend, panel moderator Philippa Sturm (Woodrow Wilson Center) read the abstract of his “The Influence of American Muslim Intellectuals in Muslim Intellectuals in the Arab World.” In it, he mentioned that fewer books each year are translated into Arabic than into Spanish for Spain. As a result, there is an intellectual disconnect and a limited range. He mentioned that Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Khalid Abou El Fadl, and Hamza Yusof were the best-known American Muslim authors. The second panel, “Assessing the Current Influence of American Islamic Thinkers on Islamic Thinkers in Iran, Turkey, and Africa,” featured Gholamreza Aavani (Iranian Institute of Philosophy), Ibrahim Kalin (College of the Holy Cross), and Suleyman Nyang (Howard University.” Aavani, in his “The ...