In Multiple Voices: Challenges and Opportunities for Islamic Peacebuilding After September 11

Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies
Notre Dame, Indiana, USA: April 12-13, 2002

The Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies' Program in Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding (PRCP) convened its first major conference to explore the heterogeneity that exists within Islam by surveying and analyzing the disparate reactions to the events of September 11, and identified the renewed opportunities for peacebuilding and conflict transformation available within the Islamic tradition.

Participants addressed various aspects of Islamic peacebuilding and presented case studies of local Muslim responses to the events of September 11 in conflict areas such as Palestinian territories, Chechnya, Daghestan, Pakistan, Kashmir, and the Philippines.

In his keynote address, UCLA Professor of Islamic Law, Dr. Khalid Abou El-Fadl called on Muslims to take up the invitation of the Quran to engage in "a collective enterprise of goodness." Dr. Louay Safi, President of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS), argued in a paper entitled Islam's Jihad for Peace that it is "very crucial to expose the confusion of those who insist that jihad is a holy war and who place doubts on Islam's ability to support global peace." According to Safi, the broader Quranic concept of jihad is "consistent with world peace."

In one of the more provocative papers, Rockefeller Visiting Fellow Dr. Thomas Scheffler argued that, contrary to a fast-growing academic opinion, "the jihadi ideology developed by [Usama] Bin Laden and his lieutenants is neither apocalyptic, fringe or apolitical." He furthermore suggested that Bin Laden's popularity is not rooted in "apocalyptic terrorism," but, on the contrary, "in its appeal to well-established innerworldly eschatological thought in orthodox Sunni mainstream Islam." Scheffler's conclusion is that the reluctance of mainstream Islamic theology to "accept the loss of temporal power and/or to cultivate other, spiritual, sources of power" is a major obstacle in the way of sustainable Islamic peacebuilding.

In her response, Dr. Asma Afsaruddin, Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame, argued "many Muslims share the extremist's resentment over specific American foreign policy measures that result in unqualified support for Israeli occupation and repression of the Palestinian people. However, the vast majority of Muslims have not resorted to terror to express their sorrow and outrage in these cases. To state that there is no difference between those who espouse and use terror and those who do not and would not condone its usage to redress these injustices is a gravely flawed conclusion," she contended.

Dr. Graham Fuller, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, also called for a shift and re-orientation of American foreign policy in the Middle East in order to provide an antidote to Islamic extremism. He observed that the war on terrorism has three objectives: to punish those who have committed or supported terrorism, to deter future acts of terror, and to address the socio-economic environment that leads to acceptance of terrorism. While U.S. policy will likely succeed in achieving its punitive goals, and may have some success at deterrence, virtually no attention is being given to addressing the root causes of terrorism. Thus, "the net affect may be to exacerbate problems in the long term," he concluded.

In his paper on Inter-religious Peacebuilding, PRCP Coordinator A. Rashied Omar argued that the dramatic events of the past year have ironically created renewed opportunities for inter-religious solidarity in the United States. He identified a number of critical challenges that inter-religious activists need to face in order to transform this newfound interest and energy into a sustainable movement for peace.

The PRCP hopes to publish the revised papers that were presented in a conference volume that, according to Kroc Institute Director Scott Appleby, "will frame the relevant issues for an educated general audience."

For additional information, contact Abdul Rashied Omar, Coordinator of the Project on Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding, The Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studiesr for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, P.O. Box 639, Notre Dame, IN 46556-0639, USA; e-mail (574)631-6970; fax (574)631-6973; e-mail .

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