joe and i hope that we will fulfill this commitment to you tonight and every night as we bring you focus on islam at a certain point my mother asked me to ask my professor my muslim professor what his children were going to be he had five why does she want an italian american catholic studies and to be unemployed so as i grew up in new york which is a very cosmopolitan area for as far as you could walk there were no mosques one didn't even have a sense of the mosque if you thought of a mosque it was something that was overseas if you did think of a muslim it was somebody who was overseas when i finished my degree in one thousand nine hundred seventy four i discovered what it meant to go into near unemployment and it was for five or six years in which there was absolutely no interest in islam i obtained a job teaching everything but islam i would send out book proposals maybe one hundred ninety seven wouldn't answer the other three would say great idea but there's no market if you look at most colleges and universities you didn't find islam in the curriculum high schools in grammar schools forget it and look at where we are today only twenty twenty five thirty years later i have trouble saying thirty years later  ages me so i'll say twenty twenty five thirty years later we no longer talk about islam in the west we have to talk about islam in the west within my senate we have a special division a program in fact we have a conference coming up in april it's actually the conference is being called muslims of the diaspora we decided not just talking about sort of muslims in the west we have islam is the second or third largest religion in the united states and in europe so it's not only islam as a global reality one point two billion muslims more than fifty six muslim countries but islam is now part and parcel of the united states and of europe as i like to say it's late in coming in late in realisation but in many ways to use poor syntax in english muslims are us not just us as part of the global community us as americans or it would be us as brits as french citizens this is indeed a remarkable reality how we going to respond to this how will we all respond to this how will we face the reality that islam is both a global and domestic presence and a global and domestic force and therefore a global and domestic challenge going to talk about it at two levels one in terms of if you will christian relations globally and then because i can never resist it when i have a fair number of muslims in the audience i will talk about the challenge as i see it to the muslim community something which i'm often invited to do and something which i know that when people don't like what i hear then they say why do we need to listen to him he's not a muslim so it's a sort of interesting you had a very good situation if you like what i say you can say it's amazing how a non muslim can the got it right on the other hand if you don't like it you can say how do you expect if you want to understand the challenge i would put it in terms of two phrases those who speak of a clash of civilizations and those who talk about a civilizational dialogue about five or six years ago when i was watching the gulf war unfold i was very concerned about this notion of clash of civilizations huntington had not written his piece yet but i just had a sense that the way things were shaping up there was this danger and i wrote a book called the islamic threat myth or reality but i remember having the concern as the book was with the publisher it hadn't come out yet that maybe i was wrong maybe this sense of confrontation was going to pass you know the gulf war would pass and somehow everything would be wonderful and in fact that kind of issue a challenge is out there on the other hand the last five years the first major speaker at our center in addition to the  the who visited me the first day i open the center five years ago about a half hour after i opened the center and caused all kinds of comments throughout the school of foreign service even though it's a school of international affairs people just couldn't couldn't believe that we had an ayatollah walking into the building let alone coming down to my my center and i remember sticking my head out the door and saying this is a new boy in town we've got a new approach you know in the university but then we had on what abraham come the deputy prime minister of malaysia and he gave a major address receive the presidential medal and it was called towards a civilizational dialogue and more recently as you know president katsumi of iran has talked about civilizational dialogue and so we have those two options out there and those options therefore are not only being discussed within the west but they are being discussed among muslim leaders in terms of relations between the muslim world in the west what can we say about the relationship of islam in the west past and present on the one hand it's a difficult topic to talk about because both sides have their perception of the other both sides have engaged as indeed iran in the united states is engaged for the last twenty years in a process of mutual satanas ation in a process at times of mutual demonization from the early spread and expansion of islam to the crusades  the inquisition to the ottoman empire to european colonialism to the cold war to the post cold war there have indeed been points of conflict in confrontation no one can deny that and i will talk about them tonight but you will know when i get to the twenty first century the question is whether we're going to choose to move beyond them or to just stay comfortably talking about them but those points of conflict and confrontation have been there and the irony is the conflict and confrontation came not only because of differences they came because the similarities the very similarities that i will argue become the basis for moving forward together where in the old days reasons for confrontation or taken that way the spread of islam was taken as a theological political and civilizational threat it would sound like we were talking about similarities believed in the one true god as do christians and jews muslims believed in a long line of prophets they believed in revelation to moses to jesus and one final time to the prophet muhammad they believed in accountability and responsibility in life social justice family values and they believed if you will in eternal accountability heaven in hell and yet this itself became a source for conflict again why if christians were comfortable in saying that christianity had come to succeed judaism that the revelation had somehow been distorted and now they would be a new revelation christians were not comfortable when muslims came along and extended that same logic and said we have one final revelation now coming to the prophet mohammed in the koran if christians were comfortable and say our community has now been given a universal mission to spread god's will they were challenged and threatened when muslims came along and said and god has now given that mission over to us so in an interesting kind of way the illogical similarities became a source for in a sense the illogical confrontation at times politically obviously the spread of islam the extent to which it overwhelmed eastern christianity was seen as a threat the extent to which it spread globally it was seen as a competitive threat and of course civilizational and culturally this was the and yet there were many points of cooperation these points of cooperation and indeed of civilizational dialogue are too easily passed over part of that is that in many ways we are more comfortable you know we can criticize the media today for being concerned about headline events and conflict and you put the media on and they don't talk about what's good they just put it on and all you see of the murders in the crimes but in fact that's what human nature is also attracted to the media wouldn't be doing it if people didn't look for it and that's what sells books and that's what sells t v shows and that's what grants people's interest and so in a strange kind of way we engage in that ourselves you know we talk about our civilization past we see the points of conflict we often don't talk talk about the points of cooperation as islam spread christians and jews played a major role in the islamic empire that's a major part of history some are aware of it most aren't as islam developed its great civilization and culture it would have never been done without muslims learning from western philosophy and science and mathematics and then building on that as well as obviously also drawing off in the end their primary if you will disciplines and sciences koranic studies  but in terms of that civilizational dialogue was very much there it's very interesting that today is march seventh if i have it right and i cannot believe this my mother would be so happy today is the feast of st thomas aquinas st thomas aquin one of the great christian and catholic theologians and philosophers of all times thomas aquinas was able to be the philosopher and theologian that he was because he is he not only thomas aquinas but his teacher who drew heavily off arab in islamic thought and culture that kind of confluence is often overlooked those points of contact and cooperation are often overlooked and indeed part of the problem we have is that we often see the world in terms of either off rather than saying there are points of conflict there are points of cooperation what can we learn from it how do we move forward but what about the twenty first century what about muslim christian relations in the twenty first century well that gets kind of interesting and tricky i will say some things some in the audience may be obvious but my experience is that they are not to neither the average muslim that i come across in the average american they know part of what i say but they don't understand the way in which i'm going to frame what i say to understand muslim christian relations today in the twenty first century to understand the relationship if you will of islam and the west and of muslims in the west with let's say jewish and christian communities one has to appreciate a couple of major not just facts but in a sense see them as realities and experiences both muslims and christians bringing to bear their historical baggage when i was a young scholar i was on a panel at the at the university of chicago and on one of the great muslim scholars the twentieth century teaching at the university of chicago chaired the session and i had to catch a plane to go home and i was very nervous about being able to catch the plane to go home and also nervous about how well i would come across because i was with three very senior and get up and he said because i was the last one to speak could i ask my brothers on the panel to skip over their denunciation of the crusades and european colonialism and american colonialism and get to the heart of the talk whatever it is so that professor esposito could have a chance to speak what he was really saying was that matter what your topic was if you had a muslim scholar the muslim scholar would begin by denouncing the past you say you they talk of nothing to do with european colonialism somehow it was connected to european colonialism or the crusades you know and that's not to deny the reality of the past but that was there and similarly one can talk about the other side but the reality is that we both have that kind of baggage and then something else happens most people forget that indeed most people in the west knew nothing about islam or very little about islam in the muslim world and that their knowledge their engagement with islam came primarily through the iranian revolution that is a simple fact and so the encounter of the west with islam is an encounter if you're american for example of seeing the shah of iran who was regarded in america who would come with his wife be on television he dressed like us t like us spoke good english was a modernizing show talked about bringing iran into the twenty first century overnight was on all the talk shows was hosted by jimmy carter six months before iran f it was unthinkable that that would be overthrown by if you will a bearded mullah ayatollah the ayatollah khamenei who is not only a strange figure that is no one had ever seen an ayatollah chances are in the u s but he also looked like an extremely old man because of his white beard which is one of the reasons i took my beard off after thirty years i once said that to the ayatollah khomeini's daughter and she looked at me and said because they showed my passport with this huge b and she said watch take it off and i told that story she said the first time i went to iran after the revolution i was very nervous she said but i like men with white beards and she was sitting under a picture of a father and i thought my god i'm never going to get out of here i just embarrassed myself and then she just sort of moved her veil aside to show me she was smiling so i could relax but in any case for americans there is the picture of the shah that's the picture suddenly of this man he not only have his throws to show up but overthrows him from where a village in france i mean that's impossible i mean if you think about it logically that that would happen and what was part of that process the taking of american hostages every night americans would put their t v on and they were told that not just americans were held hostage america was being held hostage by whom by the muslims and what did they see every day in the morning or in the afternoon when they put on national television people in the streets of iran yelling death to america well you know if you're the average american sitting there and you see people grab your diplomats and they go out every day you see them on t yelling death to america death to america you don't need much intelligence to say they may mean it you know i mean if i turned to my mother at that time and said guess what i'm going to go and see some of the mosques in iran my mother might have been just a little nervous about my security so this was the interaction at the same time ronald reagan when he came into the presidency alongside the evil empire put what gadhafi slash khomeini you remember the night that the united states bombed libya reagan said why we doing it it's gadhafi terrorism and the worldwide islamic fundamentalist movement then dan quayle the vice president on the bush speaking at the naval academy said to the cadets your job is to protect us from being caught off guard internationally by international threats like naziism communism and islamic fundamentalists and so both in the minds of americans in the visions that they saw through the headline events on c n n and from this senior political leaders there was the sense that there were one point two billion muslims second largest religion in the world but suddenly now there was this confrontation and scenes from lebanon of embassies being bombed and people hijacked reinforced that sense of if you will a clash of civilizations the world trade center bombing for many had the sense of its being brought home as a result of ignorance headline events bury the complexities the diversity of what's going on in the muslim world and so everything gets seen through the prism of if you will an islamic threat equated with iran slash  you can see that no where more clearly than in the one nine hundred ninety s because if in the one nine hundred eighty s the fear was iran export of the revolution both in the middle east and to the wider world or of radical groups such as the group that assassinated saddam in the one nine hundred ninety s when you have elections and you would think this is going to be fine it's going to show that islam is participate within the system they are major social forces within society developing institutions they have major political forces the reality of it is that many of the governments in the west like many of the regimes in the muslim world were even more panicked because now it looked like islamists were going to come to power through ballots not bullets the inability to deal with the reality of islam and of muslim societies what does this mean in terms of the twenty first century and relationships between the muslim world in the west and what does this mean to the muslims of america and the muslims in the west in general the first thing is that we are now in a position and at a time as we face the twenty first century where the wrong situation has created the right situation what do i mean by that interest in islam in the muslim world did not come because people woke up in the seventy's and said gee we didn't understand islam the second largest in the world religion we're all children of abraham let's hold hands and learn something more now what it was was we have a geo strategic threat we need to learn more about islam in the muslim world but as a result of that coverage of islam in grammar school and high school in colleges and universities has exploded there are virtually no major colleges or universities where islam in the muslim world are not to be found taught in the curriculum coverage of islam in terms of publications that situation has exploded do a search in your library for books on islam in the muslim world before the iranian revolution and after it is absolutely remarkable if you want to see a really good example take a look at my c i finished my degree in one thousand nine hundred seventy four between seventy four and seventy nine and i had for that was it from one nine hundred eighty on i have i don't know how many books i don't know how many articles maybe i don't know whatever the numbers are but they are fairly impressive not just because i'm impressive but because in quotes there's a real interest out there but we'd like to think the first is the more important one but there is a real interest i could publish a book every other day and they would be a market for it i could do a video series on islam in the muslim world etc etc the interest is there now it came about for the wrong reason but a lot of good returns are actually coming in there is far more of a knowledge of islam in the muslim world out there at the same time we still are faced with those who say but in the post cold war islam represents the second largest religion it provides the only ideological alternative with you know with the death of communism of the passing of communism and so there's that potential challenge or danger of a clash but at the same time if you look there are a whole generation of scholars and experts and political analysts who take the opposite position and so when you see those who talk about a class you have many others who counted that that situation did not exist ten years ago if you were in washington they're up there is present in washington now two schools of thought in general that deal with this issue not just as in my time one school of thought but again where is the challenge who's being challenge one of the responses i want to move to the muslim community very quickly so i'm just going to make a couple of comments internationally the challenge internationally full muslim countries the vast majority of whose rulers are to indeed think about what is best for their people long term and to open up the system it is for muslim rulers to indeed show that they believe in self determination but here self determination for their own people to allow people to participate more politically to allow people to choose the direction of their their societies to allow people to discuss and debate the role of religion in society to avoid using repression as the only means to keep control to develop what i would call the culture and institutions of civil society of an open society much as m to me for example is calling for in iran today without that one will simply perpetuate authoritarianism whether it's secular or religious the challenge to western governments is to walk the way they talk that is if western governments are going to say that they believe in self determination and democracy then it must be for everyone you can have a double standard you can talk about the promotion of democracy in some parts of the world but not in the middle east and in many parts of the muslim world the challenge to those who say that they are committed to islam socially and politically to those who are called islamic activists or islamists is to themselves show that they can walk the way they talk if they want to ask for rights under a regime they have to show that when they are in power and in authority they will extend those same rights to others who disagree with them they must show that they too can be self critical still critical not only of their excesses but the excesses of others committed in the name of islam so self determination and self criticism are in fact what indeed muslim countries the west islamic activists and indeed all of us are called in common to share but in fact what most of us tend to do is to compare our ideals 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 off all their fault we're beyond that christianity isn't like that's what islam is about islam is it like that'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 etc that level of self criticism the very difficult thing to to move