is that you know warring competition
makes you strong and inventive and you
know gives you the power to rule the
world well this is have gilding the lily
I think but it's a it's part of this
story now what I'm trying to to argue
for is a a view of history that says you
know the similarities both in doctrine
and in scriptural origin and in the
actual history of institutions whether
we're talking about universities or the
clergy or other phenomena the spread of
a single dominant religious language
that the the similarities between what
happens in the Islamic Middle East and
North Africa and what happens
particularly in that part of Europe that
becomes part of Latin Christendom those
civil ladies similarities are so great
as to constitute a single history and
they should be taught together just as
someone in a classics Department is
expected to know Greek and Latin and
someone at least in this university who
studies East Asian history is required
to know both Japanese and Chinese we
should make it a requirement that anyone
who does let's say pre modern history
dealing with northwest the northwest
quadrant of the afro-eurasian landmass
they should all be required to to know
both Arabic and and Latin and preferably
Greek and Persian as well because we
don't we've been so governed by the
narratives of division that we have
structured our entire Academy around
this it is naive I think of me to think
this could ever change I when I was
writing the book I had this idea that I
would throw out the term Islamic
Christian civilization and then I would
simply google it every few weeks or a
few hours and and watch as it took over
the world because surely that is what a
better idea does this is this is what a
this is what the better mousetrap does
so I did and lo and behold I pretty soon
eyes out of the single digits and so you
know I can't say that my endeavor has
been crowned with success or perhaps
ever will be crowned with success but if
one thing I think it has done is to
introduce at least the possibility of
people reading history differently and
it isn't that you can look at it this
way and learn from the other the notion
of the other is in itself is a
questionable issue are we not the same
who's the other after all for a very
very long time
Europeans knew perfectly well who the
other was and if you were a Lutheran it
meant it was the satanic Pope in Rome
and if you were a Catholic
it meant it you were one of these young
it was these people who followed these
demonic demented
Protestant leaders and then it all kind
of cooled out they said hey hey we're
all Christians we can get along well you
know I'm not saying that there is no
violence now that there is no no contest
but in the long run we have one history
we're all sharers in this history and if
the Protestants and the Catholics can
sit down and break bread together and
agree to hate Muslims then why can't the
Protestants and the Catholics and the
Orthodox and the Jews and the Muslims
sit down and recognize that they have
more to learn and more to gain from
talking about their shared history than
they have in allowing anyone to
perpetuate the kind of ideologically
distorted history that this book
represents which to me is a profound
misreading thank you very much
thank you doctor bullet I think we can
all make a difference in creating a
slow-mo Christian as a part of our
current lexicon we should go to Google
we should write about it we should
demand it we need to put it in our
language what do you say why not
because you know it wasn't that long ago
that the notion judeo-christian became
part of our lexicon so there's nothing
impossible I think about what dr. bullet
suggests it is now my pleasure to
introduce to you Sheikh Hamza Yusuf who
is also a teacher who is a leader and a
friend he is founder and resident
scholar of Zaytuna Institute he is a man
who has learned his religion and taught
it with Austin authenticity and love in
a way that I greatly admire I will say
that he's mastered the language of the
Quran and my father is an Arab and I've
never mastered that so I'm I'm humbled
the tuna is based in Berkeley a city
that cultivates many revolutionary ideas
in in this last century in America and I
think a seminary Muslim seminary is
indeed a revolutionary idea
that's a to know sheikh hamza and his
partner Imams a shaker bring a
multi-dimensional and pluralistic and
traditional kind of learning to the
spirit of Islam and are beginning to
infuse a real sturdy steady integral
sense of Islam in America it's a very
exciting time I believe to be a Muslim
here in this country
Shekhar's is committed to as dr. bullet
is a better understanding of Islam in
this country at this time of crossroad
and indeed we are at a crossroads here
in this country and I think globally
since the defining day of that crossroad
September 11th 2001 Hamza Yusuf has
emerged as an expert on Islam in
Erica like professor bullet he
emphasizes the urgency of mutual
understanding among people of faith for
those of you who can go to Zaytuna and
sit at the feet of hamza and Imams aood
I highly recommend you avail yourselves
of the opportunity for those who cannot
we are here tonight to avail ourselves
of the opportunity of listening to
Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and then I will
return and the three of us will sit
together and talk please welcome a lot
and I say to Mohammed wine and he was
Sam he will send him to cinema and ham
dude first of all I wanted to just to
say to dr. bullet that I felt like I was
the opening act was the Beatles so now
I'm really stuck here so I think the
idea of miss reading history is a major
problem miss reading any book is always
a problem one of the former professors
at Columbia University Mortimer Adler
actually wrote a book called how to read
a book and it's actually worth reading
I would get the first edition which was
1940 it went into several editions and
it was later rewritten with Charles Van
Dorn who was the son of another teacher
from Columbia that I was actually named
after my father studied and took his
degree from Columbia here so I'm not an
alumnus but I am the son of an alumnus
that counts for anything here at the
university they'll probably send a
donation the thing now I I want to
recommend for people to read this book
because I think it is an important book
and I would not really put it past the
West that one day the idea of an Islamic
Christian civilization is quite possible
I said a few minutes ago that I think
before the Holocaust it would have been
been impossible for there to have been
the concept of a judeo-christian society
in the West I think it would have been
very difficult for people people tend to
forget that it wasn't that long ago when
Jewish people couldn't go onto the
beaches of the East Coast there used to
be signs no Jews and no Negroes allowed
so things have changed and that should
give us hope that there is possibility
of change there's a lot of talk about
change going on lately in the air but
the truth is that things do change
things change for the worse and things
change for the better and that's part of
the nature of just being in the world
even as you grow older I think you find
certain things change for the worse like
your body but your your mind actually
reaches its peak at 49 according to
Aristotle so for the young people in the
audience you have something to look
forward to if the lessons aren't making
any sense right now you might want to
review those notes in about 25 years
when you've got enough grey cells to
actually work out what the hell the
professor was talking about but I do
think things change and I think today
we're living at a time in which ideas
that were the ideas of philosophers a
thousand or 2,000 years ago are actually
becoming a currency amongst common
people which is quite stunning the idea
of racialism today is anathema in the
United States and public discourse it
it's very difficult for anybody your
career is pretty much ended if you
display public racism now there are a
lot of racists in the United States of
America and there are a lot of people
that are not even aware of their racism
we've had sociological studies where
they'll have a black person with a
Harvard degree come in and the person
interviewing the white person
interviewing them will change their
syntax because there's an assumption
that they just have to speak in a
different way and those people might
consider themselves completely free of
any racism but there are embedded
assumptions in worldviews and in the way
we look at things so things do change
and racism is one of the things that
we're seeing change in this country the
fact that 70 percent of the young people
in this country in the democratic
elections have been voting for Obama and
I think that's quite extraordinary it
says something about what's happening in
our youth it's it's and I think that
that's a sign if California they say
that what happens on the East Coast
today happened about 15 years ago on the
west coast I don't know if that's true
but we're all driving hybrid cars I
don't know if they've gotten out here
yet and we just started the Department
of volunteers which is quite I think an
extraordinary achievement by the
governor out there who if you want to
know why we elected him we're hoping
that we're going to be mistaken as a
foreign country
over in Europe so that that's one area
that has really changed we the the
people during the civil war there were
people in this country that justified
racism biblically as well as rationally
they used arguments from Aristotle of
natural slaves that there are natural
slaves in the world many of those people
were actually religious people Christian
and Jewish leaders that argued that it
was biblical that there was a biblical
basis the South was a very Christian
part of the country in fact the the the
confederacy could have been seen really
as almost a fundamentalist army I mean
these were really devout Christians and
they thought that slavery was a
perfectly acceptable biblically
sanctioned way to engage with other
people but that is no longer the case
despite the fact that there's still
racism in the South people do not accept
that idea of one person owning another
person so I think we have to be aware of
that that's quite extraordinary now in
terms of the miss reading of history I
think first of all you have to read
history before you can miss read it and
I think unfortunately a lot of people do
not know anything about the past the
past for many people is taken from
Hollywood films they know more about I
think British history from films like
Braveheart than they do from anything
they heard in in a history class and
Braveheart is has nothing to do with
British history for people that know
anything about William Wallace or what
actually have an other that there was a
guy named William Wallace who did fight
somebody named Edward you know the
second in in in British history
but this is something that many people
in this country are not aware of not
only our own history and a good example
of that is something like Ron Paul who's
seen as
kind of wacko candidate and yet much of
what he articulates is is very consonant
with founding fathers early beliefs so
it shows you how far the country has
come in terms of the founding fathers
and for instance foreign policies no
foreign entanglements that was
definitely part of American foreign
policy for a long time Americans did not
want to get involved in other places
there was massive resistance to even
getting into World War one and World War
two
there was actually a very strong America
first movement in this country one of
the spokespersons for that movement was
Charles Lindbergh who flew across the
Atlantic so there was an isolationist
attitude in the United States Americans
did not like to get involved in foreign
entanglements despite the fact that
there is a history especially after
during the McKinley and after that there
is a history of imperialistic
interventions in places like the
Philippines but generally there was
resistance to that certainly Mark Twain
if anybody's ever read his article about
the Philippines and the massacre of the
Filipinos he was part of the
anti-imperialist movement in this
country and very well-respected as
people know one of his statements about
which I think related to the Philippines
is that naked people have no rights in
this world meaning Aboriginal people and
he has his own racist remarks and things
like that in his statements but he was
acting as an American he's
quintessentially American in his anti
imperialist attitudes so the problem
with this country and the way that we
miss read history I think is that we do
have this master narrative the Americans
tend to see themselves as wearing white
hats in in many ways we are the
Manicheans we are the people that really
see things in terms of black and white
it's very difficult for us to perceive
ourselves as the bad guy because it's
just doesn't go with the narrative that
we were raised with that that was a view
of that Americans had manifest destiny
God is with after the the the
kaveri char's and the indians all fell
the Cavallari chars and the indians all
died but the country was young then with
God on our side and this is a view that
has been carried into the Middle East
this is a view that has been carried
into Afghanistan and many other places
so it's hard for us to see that we have
good intentions and this is an argument
you will hear well we have good
intentions so we're not really there
about the oil we're there to bring them
democracy well there's a lot of other
countries in the world that don't have
democracy that would have been a lot
easier to bring democracy to as just
sample case studies just to show that we
could do it like for instance Miley
Miley would give you no resistance at
all I've been to Mali I guarantee you
the Malians would love for the Americans
to invade the country and build their
infrastructure drill wells for them so
that they'd actually have potable water
and their children didn't die from
dysentery because I was just in West
Africa and I was in a village there
where the children are urinating blood
because of the grit in the water and so
I'd like to see us bring just wells to
Mauritania just wells not democracy just
well so that they can drink pure water
but that's all because we spend billions
watering our lawns and that water is
potable billions watering lawns but
we've got people dying from a lack of
potable water all over the world so
these are the realities of our time we
we like to see ourselves both in the
past and in the present as sometimes
very different from how we're viewed by
others and so it's very it becomes very
important to listen to the others so
that perhaps you can hear something
because one of the Imam Shafi one of the
great scholars of Islam who was noted
for his impeccable character was once
asked how he got such good character he
said I listened to my critics and I took
their criticism seriously it can be very
very therapeutic to listen to what
people who don't like you have to
say it can actually help you see
yourself one of the extraordinary things
about the Greeks and the Trojan War was
mentioned if you look at Homer homers
anything but manichaean because although
he's a Greek writing this sacred history
of the Trojan War I tend to side with
the view that he actually really has a
soft spot for the Trojans I think he
really sees them as actually having more
virtue than a lot of these Greek Keon
leaders in that war and yet he was a
Greek and that's why the Iliad is
anything but melodramatic because the
Greeks were not melodramatic great
literature and great poetry is never
melodramatic
it can't be or it wouldn't be great
literature or great poetry so when you
read poetry and and this is one of the
beauties for me of the tradition of
Islam is that it demands of you before
you can actually interpret the Quran you
have to master jaggedy poetry because
it's poetry that gives us the nuances of
life it's only through the poet's vision
of the world that we can actually get a
sense of the ambiguities of the world
and this is something that's often very
difficult for people to recognize that
the world is an ambiguous place it is
often very easy to miss read the world
it's very often easy to see ourselves as
we are not rather than as we are and
it's always easy to see ourselves in the
best light always that's the easiest way
to go down so in in reading history I
think the first and the first and most
important aspect is is obviously to get
the right books because often if it's
Mis written we fall into great error and
and these these lies and distortions of
history have been repeated so often that
they do become like truths for instance
that the Alexandrian library was burnt
by the Muslim
III even had a professor even though I
proved to him that it was not and this
was a professor of Religious Studies I
proved to him that it was not the case
he still told me well I like my version
better ok I mean quite literally and
this is like Galileo makes fun of a
group of church men where he shows them
that the this the central nervous system
was was located in the brain and not the
heart and he shows them and and he and
they remark that it's very interesting
what you've demonstrated and had not
Aristotle said that it was centered in
the heart we'd have to agree with you so
this is one of the tragedies that we
have authorities that become like Moses
bringing tablets in stone
if Bernard Lewis said it it must be true
because he is the doyen of Middle
Eastern Studies
nobody knows Middle Eastern Studies
better than he's fluent in Turkish and
Arabic and Persian and and and what do
you say oh great master o wise one grand
pooh-bah of all who know of the Middle
East tell us what you see with your vast
wisdom Islam something's gone wrong
we have to rectify it the question that
that I would have as an American living
in this country not even as a Muslim
American as an American is what went
wrong here what went wrong here because
when I grew up in this country I had to
get under a wooden desk out of fear of
being bombed by the Russians with
nuclear bombs if it long before Osama
Bin Ladin seriously and this was not an
axis of evil that was living in caves
that didn't even have email because
there there's there's no seriously
there's there's
oh you know Osama you've got mail you
know he's not he's not up there in that
cave you know this this was this was the
Russian war machine this was a real
threat and and we were told quick get
under your desks when I was in third
grade I didn't realize that the little
wooden desk would not protect me from a
nuclear explosion so why were they doing
that to us what was the purpose of that
exercise create fear I inherited from my
great grandmother
Lillian Cummings who studied rhetoric in
high school in Wichita Falls and in that
book which she studied in 1882 by
Alexander bein called rhetoric there's a
section called the emotions she was 16
years old when she studied this section
and in that section it had a couple
paragraphs on fear and it said
politicians will often use fear to
deprive citizens of their civil
liberties this is why in a democracy
citizens must be vigilant and always be
on guard against the use of fear because
once a person enters into a state of
fear he's willing to surrender his
common sense now why aren't those books
taught in our schools anymore really why
aren't they taught instead you know
Roosevelt said all we have to fear is
fear itself and and we had a president
that started orange alerts and red
alerts and are you afraid yet that was
actually a cover of Time magazine it had
the question are you afraid yet question
mark but when I was growing up we had
the Russian threat and yet I never heard
anybody talking about should we torture
Russian spies if we capture them to find
out what they were doing
should we have a Guantanamo
Bay for Russian spies I never heard that
it just wasn't part of America at that
time and that's why for me to be in this
country and hear people talking about
the torture question when did it become
a question because I thought that was a
medieval concept that that we we've
thrown off
I thought we transcended that I thought
human dignity no matter what a person
did they were entitled to be protected
in their body that's what I thought this
country was about so what went wrong
here that's that's a that's a question
that I think Bernard Lou's needs to ask
also if he's going to ask what went
wrong over there which is a valid
question because things aren't so good
over there but are things really that
good over here
because we've got we're rebuilding
apparently Iraq and Afghanistan and and
we haven't rebuilt New Orleans yet we
haven't rebuilt New Orleans yet really
so we have to be able to perceive the
world through the lens of nuance we have
to recognize that we're not living in a
black-and-white world there's not pure
evil in this world and pure good human
beings are an admixture of good and evil
it's our nature all of us whether you're
Muslim this is one of the extraordinary
things about the world is it's so evenly
distributed good and evil really it's
it's quite extraordinary and
intelligence as well the idea of
superiority of races intelligence is
very evenly distributed across the the
world you can take people from the
poorest countries in the world and take
them as little children and put them in
the most developed countries in the
world they learn very quick they adapt
they learn all the same sciences
everything that people here are learning
they can do it in fact you can take a
Bedouin where I lived in Mauritania you
can take a Bedouin and bring him here
and within two weeks he'll know how to
turn the switches on flush the toilet
put the toast into the toaster pop it
out you open the refrigerator pour the
milk out do the whole thing that all we
do but if you go over to where he lives
you'll die in two weeks seriously you'll
die in two weeks
you'll be dead so they can survive here
but we can't survive over there we've
got a lot to learn from the Aboriginal
peoples because we might end up going
back to no electricity and it you know
it looks like it's all headed that
eventually right the polar ice caps are
melting it's gonna all the water levels
will go up and all this electricity that
you'll have water in the house get up to
the level of the sockets and that's it
right Florida they won't have
electricity there I'll be on those
stilted houses like they have in some of
the South Asian countries so we have to
learn to look in a more nuanced way now
that I there's one issue that I want to
talk about our clothes on this is that
we're in a crises and I think
everybody's aware of that and the crises
are very deep and there are no simple
answers to this crises but we need to go
deeper and and I want to use one example
we had a police acquittal I think was an
acquittal did they it was acquittal
three police officers shot somebody
quite horribly 50 times I mean I Madiha
know it was similar situation but we
also have to recognize and this is
something that the Buddhists are
probably more adept at doing the most
other traditions we have to be able to
get in to the skin of the other and
until we can really do that in some real
deep way we'll never get to any serious
solutions we're going to remain in that
black and white us versus them police
versus civilians this type of attitude
we're living in a very violent kind
we have police officers that are
incredibly stressed out they they
graduate from these police academies
probably with a lot of ideas about what
it is to become a policeman and become
very jaded especially those that are
working in these inner cities and things
like this and until we start realizing
that we've got people out there with
post-traumatic stress syndrome we have
people out there with high levels of
depression in my state one of the
highest rates of suicide is in the
Highway Patrol this is this is our
Social Sciences you know people are
having a hard time out there and until
we start seeing that collectively we
need to work together and to really
start looking at these things at a much
deeper level we're not going anywhere in
the Muslim world we have serious
problems we have failed States we have
people that do not have basic rights we
have countries that basically there are
no legal systems they're simply not
working you cannot go to a judge and get
recourse to justice in many many
countries in the world today
it creates an immense amount of
resentment an immense amount of
instability but these are the realities
of our time and then we have a system
that rewards greed and venality we have
a system of economic injustice that is
extraordinarily harmful to the human
condition it not only harms the people
at the very bottom of the pyramid it
also harms the Pharaoh and the Quran
calls the Pharaoh as well as the slave
the Quran commands Moses to go to
Pharaoh and speak to him gently that
perhaps he might wake up and we tend to
forget that the oppressor needs help as
much as the oppressed does Socrates said
I would much rather be the one being
oppressed than the one oppressing
because the oppressed his body is being
harmed but the oppressor is destroying
his soul
in terms of the Islamic Christian
civilization I think it's a possibility
and it's going to either be the ballot
or the bullet and I'm counting on the
ball
I wanted to make note as we're talking
of change at what's possible and the
Islamic Christian civilization that we
have sitting at this stage on this stage
we have a Methodist we find out we have
all three American born here American
born son of two different Christian
traditions Catholic and Orthodox okay
so I ended up you know they call that
the Great Schism so they did divorce and
they produced one of America's great
Islamic and I and I you know I realized
the only way I could really get out of
the madness of the Catholic Orthodox
schism was to become Muslim I told an
Orthodox priest that you know he he was
actually a bishop from Albania and he
was so troubled that I apostate it and I
told him well you do know that we've got
that little clause there in the Orthodox
tradition that as long as you've been
baptized you'll eventually be okay
unlike the Catholics where it's just
well I wanted to mention that my mom is
Christian the daughter of a minister
from Scotland and my father is Muslim
Mustafa hiding from karbala and I think
that the with the three of us up here in
the mission that you set yourself out on
Richard bulletins what you're doing
Hamza in my small way perhaps myself we
are representing possibilities for this
nation and possibilities for the future
as are you out there in the room and
we're not so unusual I really wanted to
say that before we go into a greater
depth on
in this discussion because it's
important to note that there's a people
like us out there people like us out
there and and that's what we're going to
see our hope and our future so I did
notice in this talk of speaking
you stayed often enough and it's the
truth there is an American philosopher
named Tommy smothers who said that as
well he say it often enough it becomes a
truth so it's not just Bernard Lewis
he's in good company I wanted to but I
wanted to take a look just for starters
at the subtitle for this discussion miss
reading history what Islam and the West
can learn from each other so I want to
go there but I also want to thank my
disapproval of the terminologies Islam
in the West apples and videotapes you
know they're not parallel constructs so
as we try to get Islamic Christian in
our vocabulary I'd like to see if we can
find a different constructs first I was
it's a problem and it's used
so what would you say I'm going to do
use their journalist crusher what is the
most important the one thing that
America that go West should learn from
Islam and that as long should learn from
the West just for starters and I hate
that question but it's a journalist
crutch I'm going to use it right now
well the I mean I don't like the terms
either and I I think that no one except
people in the West really do like the
terms what they like about the West is
that they feel that that now is going to
ignore the fact that they have faith
tradition so they come out of and they
can say oh we're we're post Christian
were post on Judaic we're the secular
West without the without the slightest
self-awareness of where they came from
and the way in which where they came
from influence things so the the
question of what you learn to me you
know it seems to mean that you study the
history of the West through Western eyes
and you study the history of Islam it's
your westernized because we do not have
a well-articulated widely distributed
generally agreed upon history of Islam
that has not been generated in response
to and in conversation with and often in
kind of abject acquiescence in the views
of of Western scholars and I think that
one of the
one of the things that Islam can learn
from the West is the necessity of taking
control of the other dis cars so telling
the master narrative from that from
their own point of view the problem is
that the point of view shouldn't be you
know the West says it's always us
against them and we're good and they're
bad the alternative is not to say though
from a Muslim point of view it's us
against them and we're good in the West
is bad meaning you because of the you
can't mirror that dialogue instead you
have to transcend it and say no there is
a different view in which the issue of
some sort of eternal conflict is not
central that's a political changing
environment and the fact the matter is
that for hundreds of years the
Christians in the West did not consider
Islam a separate religion they thought
Judaism the separate us if it was a
heretical form of Christianity
people miss that nuance of the Divine
Comedy in that he places his fictional
character of the Prophet in the circle
schismatic no he not with the false
prophets but with the schismatic s-- and
and and i he is there because he split
Islam according to that Shia Sunni split
narrative so it was seen as a schism
it's it's it's it's very interesting so
for an author like the one that I was
talking about Anthony pactum he says don
t got it wrong inexplicably don t
doesn't understand that it's it's the
West against Islam but the Western songs
are actually very recent yeah and then
the the Eastern Orthodox Christians have
always been disenfranchised from even
Western Christianity and very much I
think that the letter of the arch Bishop
of Antioch to the Pope about his the the
comments he made about Islam he said
look you know we've been living here
with Muslims for centuries and it's very
different from from your perspective and
he was just asking that he understood
the situation a little deeper than