joe and i hope that we will fulfill this commitment to you tonight and every night as we bring you focus on islam but in fact what most of us tend to do is to compare our ideal to somebody else's reality and that gets in our way we look at somebody else and we see all their faults and we say it's not awful therefore we're beyond that christianity  isn't like that's what islam is about islam isn't like that it's what christianity is about the west isn't like that it's the way muslims are so each one is calling the other militant each one is calling each other whatever neo colonialist et level of self criticism the very difficult thing to move to let me talk about the muslim community this is what i find to be much more fun one of the things that you will find for those of you who are younger see only thing that's has any value to the idea of getting old you know you're getting older when you suddenly reflect on something and say i remember twenty or thirty years ago the game's over once you do that when i see people say that i always say my god that's terrible i hope i never get to that stage now i try to say it was twenty years instead of thirty years thirty years instead of forty years it's the only thing i brag about this is how long i've been married which is thirty three years but anything anything beyond that is a problem for me to deal with but the reality of it is that when you get to this age you can then say what you like especially if you fly into a city and you know you're leaving the next morning it's like watching you know the the old west and you come into the town you shoot up and you leave at night the only time it's a problem is if you're going to stay but if you if you've got people get upset you still know you're going to leave you going to make it back to your hotel hopefully and we won't say what hotel i'm at and then you you had off to whatever if what i'm flying out of i know where you are you know where i have that's the problem i know this iranian connection is very dangerous that's what they meant in the introduction  you know whenever i go to iran people somehow expect me to wear a tie now normally i wear it the first time and then i take it off because i always want to announce that i mean iran wearing the tie this makes everybody feel happy because they expect an american to wear on the other hand it's the one thing that's illegal in iran  actually everybody always loves to say well it's illegal to wear a tie but please wear one because people expect you to as a as a as a westerner not what's the challenge in the twenty first century in terms of muslim christian understanding especially from the perspective of the muslim i have been functioning within the muslim community for about thirty years because my teachers were muslim because virtually everybody i studied with in graduate school most of the grad students were muslim and therefore i'm in a sense of probably one of the few non muslim  original members of things like the n s a and a m s s i'm on more muslim mailing lists than one can believe including fundraising mailing list but the reality of it is that things have changed enormously but the challenge to the muslim community is are you going to show in the twenty first century that they have are you going to show that you're now at a second third stage and in development the muslim community today has the human and financial resources to make a difference it did not have those resources thirty years ago twenty years ago you did not have the number of muslims you did not have the number of muslim professionals you did not have the number of successful muslims in the professions educated muslims etc those human and financial resources there the question is whether or not that will be harnessed whether or not that will be harnessed so that one functions effectively within the broader muslim community the united states and in interaction with the non muslim community in the united states let me make some general observation observations about muslim christian relations the most important thing is that the way in which  christian relations really moves forward is not to start with what was slim's in christian share in common religiously but rather what they share in common socially and i never put it that way before and i'll show you why it's when you encounter the other in the workplace and in school and realize that the other in many ways is very much like me when people encounter each other as neighbors and realize that they share a lot of concerns that they are parents they are concerned about their children they are concerned about their neighborhoods they are concerned about family values they are concerned about education about sex education they are concerned about drugs they are concerned about it's when people actually work together side by side that they not only see the differences but they see what they share in common as human beings and they also see a good deal of the values that they share in common then one can move to the next stage if you start simply with the theological part of the problem is a lot of people i know a very devout but they don't really know all that much about their religion you know i mean they know a lot in terms of their devotion but when they go to engage somebody from another faith to talk they often don't know very much about the person's other faith let alone about their themselves in terms of that level of sophistication and they get bogged down now but to move to the theological allowing for the differences that that exist between muslims and christians and that should exist and should be celebrated the commonalities are staggering the belief in god profits revelation the belief in family and social values the concerns with secularism materialism etc they are staggering but often our differences get in the way of seeing the commonalities that's one challenge the second challenge is as i said to realize our common experience the third challenge is as i said earlier not to compare our ideal to somebody else's reality we should compare each other in terms of ideals christian ideals muslim ideals realities christian realities muslim realities then we see our ideals and we see our problems that we share in common otherwise we are  american phrase stacking the deck against the other person i'll just talk about my ideals and i'll deal with your reality and so i can always retreat when you say my god look at what christians have done or whatever that's not really christianity so that has nothing to do with it rather than saying that may not be christianity but indeed a lot of christians engage in that so the ability to talk if we want to appreciate each other about our shared ideals as well as our shared realit in terms of the muslim community itself what are some observations that can be made to me this is the most important observation both globally and domestically muslims have to not just reclaim salaam they have to reclaim this self confidence when islam spread in the early centuries the reason why it was such a dynamic interactive force in addition to talking about god's guidance in terms of islam spreading was that was slim's was self confident they felt that they were in control so when they engaged other cultures and civilisations they could interact in dialogue and borrow freely there wasn't a concern of losing one's identity of being co opted of being overpowered now it's not to say that wilson's don't have a problem at times in some societies with the issue of being overwhelmed in terms of cultural penetration etc but in many other parts of the world and in many situations muslims are a lot more established empowered then they allow themselves to be empowerment is very much something that is necessary in self confidence the danger would simply repeating the past and remembering the past if you're not careful is that you tend to live in the past and not say this is what the past was about what can we learn from it thank god we're in a position to move beyond it how do we build on that otherwise we're still fighting the battles of the past and we're still feeling that we're not in power for example when italian catholics came to the united states they were minority religiously and ethnically they were not accepted by the dominant group they could not get into the best schools and universities when my father went for a job in new york it said blacks jews and italians need not apply when i was a young man going to a beach in massachusetts i was told by someone be a little careful because they don't like blacks puerto rican and italians the community was faced with empowering itself it had to think about how do we as a minority community raise our children in this majority community educate them in a way in which they will not simply be overwhelmed by that majority experience how do we as a disenfranchised minority community move into the positions of if you will power and  authority within the society i had a colleague i go to lunch with all the time and he would always ask me the same questions we would go not all the time we would go to lunch every three or four years and he must've had a bad memory every three or four years we would sit down and he'd say to me so john how are you what how's your wife and the children and i would say i told you a long time ago that my wife and i decided not to have children oh so john how was your garden and i'd look at him and say my garden he said would you know your people have gardens italians have gardens how would the zucchini and i would say we don't have a garden we don't do zucchini and then i would say but i built a patio and he'd say ah because because italians are good with cement we build patios and we put people in cement and then i would say no no no i didn't build a patio i gotcha we don't do patios in my family either but you see the image was that we were all trained not to go to university not to move into top as you know positions but yes we could we could be laborers but never move beyond being laborers in that community has empowered itself the italian catholic italian american community irish american community polish american community let's take a look at the muslim community in america the numbers of muslims in america i'm not even bother to go and get into i do interviews on this you call up six people you get different statistics but islam is clearly the third largest religion in islam in america muslims are now part of the fabric of society go to any major city go to any town there are mosques all over the place i like to say the problem that the muslim community has and some was some communities there are more mosques than there are muslims which is something about ethnic problems in the oma you know but that's an issue that i may get to muslims are now part and parcel of the professions in the community both my parents have muslim physicians it's not because they say ah my son goes to the muslim world he writes on islam we should have a muslim physician far from it's because in new york in new jersey muslims are a significant presence in jersey city over and then we began to talk about the number of sort of not only muslims but you know gyptian was limbs and et cetera in the vicinity so muslims are very much they're there in our universities they're in our jobs they're in our society but the challenge of the muslim community is where do you go from here how do you marshal those resources to engage in institution building how do muslims build institutions what i mean by institutions i mean institutions that represent muslim concerns muslims need institutions in washington and nationally the deal with issues like public affairs the media political lobbying etc so that people have a sense of the significance of the number of muslims otherwise it's as if the muslim community is in a closet nobody knows they're there if you are visible that's what makes people in washington listen to you and only that if you are a visible community that's what makes the media respond you call up the media and say i found what you said about islam offensive i saw a jag last night and i didn't like it they don't care but you let them know that you're a significant number of people than they do care but that kind of monitoring of the media and responding that kind of monitoring of the political system in responding can only come when you build institutions the second thing is to train the next generation to move into the professions that allow for this kind of access and that's happening we see muslims in the legal profession medical profession but it's going to become more and more important to see muslims in politics to see muslims in communications it's going to become more and more important to see muslims not only study medicine and engineering but of all things islam and actually getting degrees i travel around the country i speak to a lot of muslim communities and i meet with graduate students and i'll just give you two or three stories to give you an idea of some of the problems the community faces is talking with one group and a graduate student was saying to me in a major city he said the problem we have is with sometimes our parents generation i said what's the problem he said they live in denial i said denial of what they deny that they've been living in america for thirty years and that they're going to die in america and he said that has an impact on us in terms of how we define ourselves as muslims in america that's one issue the second issue was of a group a young group of muslim graduate students in which three of them discovered that they shared something in common and it wasn't islam it was the fact that they were having a tremendous problem with their fathers what was the problem the three of them it switched out of medical school into islamic studies the fathers who were committed muslims want their kids to be devout muslims they wanted to be really employed to make big bucks the idea that their kid was going to leave medical school and get a ph d in islamic studies was beyond that you going to be a professor dealing with that reality but unless the muslim community develops that side of itself how can it in power itself will the muslim community always be looking where one of the things i learned early on as a scholar is that there is an and when wilson's react to certain international events they react with a sense of commonality but the other thing i learned is that the also exists but it doesn't exist in this sense i went from one was in country where my wife and i were living to another and people said why are you going there this is the best possible place to be i said but you know it's another muslim country   has but but we set the tone for the islamic world and in fact our people go there and educate them you see that kind of little tension that then can get played out within the american experience and can weaken the muslim community that's what i meant by communities where you don't just have a kind of integrated muslim community which you have and you have many of them here i've seen them on the west coast i've seen them in toledo i've seen them in many communities but in many others when you land in a city you can identify the mosque so most ethnically you get the pakistani moscow turkish mosque you've got the some of the masa filled and some of them aren't mobilizing and getting beyond that developing a community that has more cohesion but also developing a community that's not only moving into some of the professions but all of the professions so that when one faces the kind of religious questions that one has to face in terms of the adaptation if you will and encounter of islam with the american scene you actually have muslims who not only know their islam but know america too often you have some you know islam we don't know america very well who just come over here you have those you know america but don't know islam very well now don't be offended when i say don't know islam very well what i mean is that one can know islam devotion but not know it in terms of the kind of intellectual resources that one needs for interpretation i like to say that muslims jews and christians have shared an experience as they adapt to america and even internationally you move into them up into modern education what happens is people get grow up and get an education university level but the many their religious knowledge stays the same level that they had as children now so they become if you will ph d physicists but their knowledge of islam is still here in terms of the knowledge of sharia the knowledge of islamic history the knowledge of etc and unless one really understands the realities of one's faith and history and its tremendous the tremendous dynamism of islam and how that dynamic played out how islam both preserved its essential but also was dynamic enough to interact with other cultures to transform them to borrow from the mid century one cannot move forward let me bring this talk to a conclusion although somebody told me that after turkey gave his famous six day talk i thought that was very interesting i'd like to try to accept you know i mean that's that was also another example of how muslims have become excessively americanised i spoke in this meeting years ago there about five thousand muslims and i got up and i said relax it back this talk may go thirty minutes it may go three hours people are immediately going like this and i said you know twenty five years ago when i went out in the muslim world to talk nobody was looking  fact when i was in iran recently the minister of culture began a conference that i was speaking on a slum in civil society and he said maybe if we're going to have a civil society here one of the first things we should do to be civil is to start on time i've notice we're not starting anything on time commenting it seems to me that as the muslim community defines itself in the twenty first century and moves forward the challenge really will be how to harness those resources now i can say that and you can sit there and say we're going to do it let me tell you i travel this country all the time and i talk to muslim communities and i meet muslims who really want to see that change and that difference take place and have a commitment this is what it is we get together and we talk about the problem of islam globally and we talk about palestine we talk about kashmir we talk about bosnia we talk about american deal colonialism we talk about the american double standard we talk about muslim bashing and we are upset and the muslim community is going to change and it needs to change and then we break for dinner we have a wonderful dinner it may be  n whatever you know and then everybody knows if you make it to dinner what happens after dinner you leave within ten minutes after dinner we all go away say we feel good we identified the problems we show that we know what they are and we can really get upset about them the more upset you get is the most sincere you are you know but remember what the couch potato can do and most of you can't do if you don't move the men you can't reach  you can't go for the wallet take out of the wallet what you need to support in order to develop the institutions and do the institution building and that becomes the critical question or are you say things like and i and a number of my colleagues get it all the time you get e mails and letters to a professor esposito thank you for speaking out in the media thank you for writing that op ed piece you really need to do more dear professor esposito thank you for creating this center in washington which has such and such an impact on your all over the world i wish you would create a few more positions for muslim scholars and get the funding for them and i say up i should go out to christians and say i need another chair in islamic studies christians come up with the money because muslims they really want it but somehow they can't get to it now the challenge to the community then is to develop the vision you've got the resources and to support that vision i often say this with regard to communities in washington there are some good muslim groups that are doing terrific work i was traveling recently in the midwest and one of the talks that i gave people asked to have breakfast the next morning some of the muslim leaders and at breakfast this literally happened one of the people who's a very well known physician in the midwest very bright he and i get along really well said you know that group in washington i love the work that they do but you know i have a little bit of a problem because the leader of that group during the gulf war took a position that i didn't like i said there are awful lot of other muslims that want to see another criticism and interpretation of id it's like looking at tufts of the koran there's more than one interpretation how is any single muslim going to please you on everything that goes on and so part of the challenge as you know the challenge of islam to islam is the challenge to christians it's the challenge of recognizing diversity within the community that the unity of aslan includes a diversity in islamic law we call it if the life the differences that exist among them a dock of among the law schools the ability to accept diversity the ability to tolerate diversity not only diversity from religion to religion but within religion is the only thing that can make the community strong if you don't tolerate diversity then there's no debate there's no discussion and then you have an experience that i've had both within christianity and islam and now i will and this is what i call the christian the radical christian and radical muslim alternative years ago i went out to lunch with a young man who was studying in a major university was a born again christian and after lunch he said you know i really enjoyed this can we have lunch again i said sure i said if you don't mind having lunch with somebody that you know is going to help and he looked at me and i said you do believe i going to hell don't you he said yeah but i didn't because i'm not born again you know i said if you believe your parents are going to hell they're good lutherans they raised you they good christians it's at you but they're not born again the way and you love you but he said yeah i love my parents but they're going to hell too unless they're born again i was asked to keep out because of my friends there i was asked to keynote a major muslim conference let me just say that overseas major was uncovered and so i keynote at the conference and afterward a very well known young olim got up who's a very very