Premiere of Documentary Feature Film “Journey into America”

The world premiere of “Journey into America” was  Saturday, July 4th. This feature film will be shown around Washington and throughout the United States. Check here and journeyintoamerica.wordpress.com for show times.

The film shows Akbar Ahmed in his journey to over 75 cities and 100 mosques asking hundreds of Muslims and non-Muslims what it means to be “American.” From a bishop and an imam in Las Vegas to Somalis in small-town Nebraska to Noam Chomsky in Boston, this is the first film of its kind giving insight into the diverse and closed Muslim community in America and how they are fitting into American society. It ends on the hopeful note of coming together as a nation based on our pluralist identity going back to the Founding Fathers.

Here is a review by Saleem Ali in the Daily Times of Pakistan.

John Milewski wrote another excellent review for the Huffington Post.

My research assistant Frankie Martin wrote a recap of the premiere.

Ahmed in the News

As a Muslim and a Pakistani, Akbar Ahmed’s presence in the media is vital for the United States at this critical time. Often the voices of experts from that part of the world are absent. As the tragic crises in Pakistan and the Muslim world continues, keep watching for Ambassador Ahmed in the news for solid analysis from the world’s leading scholar on Islam and a top anthropologist. He has recently been featured on Fox News, CNN, BBC World News and BBC Radio, and Channel Four in the UK.

Will My Books Survive in Swat? on HuffingtonPost.com

Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, P.G. Wodehouse, Fredrick Barth, Ibn Khaldun, and Rumi. These were some of my constant companions through the ups and downs of my life in the civil service of Pakistan. From lonely postings in Waziristan to challenging ones in Baluchistan, I enjoyed the wisdom and humanity of these books.

I took literally the Prophet of Islam’s admonishment that the “ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.” Knowledge or ilm, after all, is the second most used word in the Quran.

So when Zeenat, my wife, and I were deciding where to leave our possessions as we prepared to go to Cambridge in the UK, without hesitation we said Saidu, the capital of Swat. Zeenat’s grandfather, the legendary Wali of Swat, had ruled the state from here. So we left behind all of our belongings, including some 2-3,000 books, in the Wali’s old palace. The books were my pride and joy and today all I possess in Pakistan.

I heard recently that the chaos created by the Taliban had allowed people to break in and steal our other possessions.

No one as far as I know has taken the books.

But these are just material things. Lives have been lost. The people of Swat have been killed by the Taliban and now many are dying as a result of the massive army assault; bombs and missiles don’t distinguish between Taliban and ordinary citizens.

Zeenat’s first cousin, a government minister, was blown up because he was determined to fight religious extremism. He was a dynamic young man and had studied at my old school so his death was a blow to both of us. Then the Taliban came for another cousin who they shot. They also killed two of his four sons in front of him. The other two managed to escape to a neighboring farm, but those who had given them shelter were also killed.

Dozens more of her relatives have lost houses and property and barely escaped with their lives.

They join over half a million people displaced in refugee camps in Pakistan. Half a million is a large number anywhere but when it is almost half of the total population of an entire area, then the loss is devastating. Swat has a dense population living along the Swat River in the valley and rich irrigated lands. With battle raging, it is now unrecognizable.

Swat was world famous as a tourist location situated in the foothills of the Himalayas. The Wali of Swat took pride in administering justice and promoting education. He had created hundreds of girls’ schools, the first in the region, and sent his grandchildren to the Jesus and Mary girls’ boarding school. He had even invited the nuns to open a school in Swat. These girls’ schools were the first target of the Taliban.

Under the Wali there was sense of pride as Swatis felt they had a special status even in Pakistan.

Today they are between a rock and a hard place; the Taliban are attacking them from one side and the Pakistan army from the other. The scourge of modern terrorism has converted their paradise into a twenty-first century nightmare.

As for my books, neither the Taliban nor the Pakistan army soldier is known for cultivating a love of books. I don’t think many in either camp would have much time for the humor of Wilde, Shaw, or Wodehouse; they would probably think that Rumi was too subversive.

So I fear for my collection whoever gets to it. The thought of my books with their pages fluttering in the wind and rain in rubbish heaps breaks my heart. In the face of the scale of the tragedy my mourning for my books seems selfish and petty. But my loss is not a personal one. I mourn the fact that knowledge itself is lost and it is that loss that has caused the present anarchy.

Original article

On Faith: “Pakistan’s Quicksand” By Katherine Marshall

The video shows the brutal beating of a young girl, well covered in her burka and red trousers, screaming and struggling as she is held down by a man and a woman. The scene symbolizes the tensions tearing Pakistan apart and it raises a host of questions. Is this what Sharia law is about? What does this primitive justice by bearded Taliban leaders portend for Pakistan? For south Asia? What’s caused the Swat Valley, a region celebrated for peace, civility, and beauty, to change so rapidly? And what can be done about it?

Make no mistake, these questions are of vital importance for the people concerned, but also for the United States and the world. Akbar Ahmed, professor at American University, has from day one (September 11, 2001) spoken relentlessly about the need to understand what is happening in the Islamic world and to act on that understanding. A Pakistani who has studied the region deeply, he is passionate and unequivocal when he says that the stakes in Pakistan’s struggles could not be higher. Pakistan, a country of 170-175 million people, is the epicenter of a much larger and volatile region. It has nuclear arms and a long established hierarchically controlled military. It influences Muslim populations far beyond its borders. And Pakistan today is in deep trouble, it is sinking in quicksand.

The irony is that Pakistan had such a hopeful start. One of contemporary history’s great leaders, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder, set out to create a modern Islamic nation. The two central issues for Pakistan today, the rule of law and education, were at the heart of his vision. He was convinced that a state could truly be both Islamic and modern, not uneasily but drawing the best from Pakistan’s founding faith and from the world of modernity. That’s Pakistan’s potential and its ideal.

The turmoil in Pakistan stems in part from the broader struggle within Muslim communities worldwide about the fundamental question of how this ancient faith, which valued ideas and learning from the start, can adapt to the changes sweeping today’s world. It is also about manifest failures in implementing Jinnah’s ideals. Pakistan’s real potential remains an unfulfilled dream.

Pakistan’s abysmal performance on education is at the heart of the problem. Parents want decent schools for their children, now. Pakistan lags behind most countries in the most basic educational performance indicators; it ranks 132nd in the Human Development index.

The education system perpetuates and exacerbates deep class cleavages. Impeccable top-grade schools contrast with a lumbering non-performing state system, while a chaotic array of unregulated private schools tumble into the void. And then there is the madrasa system, thousands of schools (no one knows how many) run by a wide range of Muslim institutions and leaders. There’s lots of myth around madrasas, and some are abominations. But there are excellent madrasas (the word simply means school) and they respond to real needs. Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea) and former U.S. diplomat Douglas Johnston, coming from very different angles, have shown on the ground in Pakistan that the educators and parents of madrasa schools can and will change given the right framework.

The perversion of Pakistan’s police forces and judicial systems, incompetent and weakened administrative structures, and widespread and worsening corruption also explain the current turmoil. People who have lost faith in their government turn to pretty much anyone who promises basic security from murder and theft. In the case of the Swat valley, it’s the bearded chiefs and mullahs in the video. But, Pakistanis from many places argue, this is out of desperation, not desire.

These are problems for Pakistanis to address, but the United States is no tepid bystander. The annual U.S. tab for support to Pakistan is about $5 billion a year. The consequences of Pakistan’s further disintegration are horrendous. With such high stakes, nowhere is smart power more in demand. And talking truth is vital as a start.

So what’s needed? First off, restore law and order. Ironically, the best model appears to be the inherited colonial system of district administrators, who were able to balance interests including police, army, local tribal chiefs, and the mullahs. That system was renowned as tough and fair, able to act and to respond. It represents an ideal of honesty, justice, and action. It’s there and it’s known. Then, at the same time, move swiftly and effectively to modernize education.

The video of brutal retrograde frontier “order” is not what modern Islam is about. Pakistan has some of the world’s finest Muslim ideals and traditions to build on. But the Swat scene should be our wakeup call, demanding our urgent, and sustained attention.

Katherine Marshall is a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, a Visiting Professor, and a senior advisor for the World Bank.
Link to On Faith

Akbar Ahmed on the Riz Khan Show, Al-Jazeera English

From Al-Jazeera.com:

The perceived relationship between Islam and the West has now become almost cliché – with phrases such as “clash of civilisations” regularly used. But what is the reality?

What do those across the Muslim world think of the West – particularly the US? And how do those in the American heartland receive practicing Muslims when they turn up at their doorstep?

Pakistani diplomat-turned-scholar Akbar Ahmed decided to take a closer look – and organised a massive “field trip” of sorts for his students. It involved visiting eight countries in the Muslim world, to observe, listen, and to answer questions about the US as well.

A subsequent journey into the American heartland was then made, to provide the mirror perspective. The initial project led to a book, Journey Into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization.

Watch the show here on Al-Jazeera’s website

Op-ed in The Independent today: Lose lawless tribal areas and you lose Pakistan itself

The “existential threat” that Pakistan now faces, according to Hillary Clinton, is overstated. There is a functioning political, civil and military structure in Pakistan that will prevent any total collapse of the state. The impulse for democracy is deep and goes back to the creation of the state in 1947. Pakistan’s founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had a vision of a modern Muslim nation with a strong emphasis on womens’ rights and civil liberties for minorities, but this vision is under greater threat than ever. Successive Pakistani leaders have, over the decades, failed to translate Jinnah’s spirit into reality, while the structures he put in place have been weakened and corrupted. The emergence of the Taliban is one consequence of this.

The Taliban’s spread from the Swat Valley into the neighbouring district of Buner is not entirely surprising: geographically, it is an appendix of Swat. The fact that Buner is close, as the crow flies, to Islamabad has set off alarm bells. But the bigger danger is what happens in Mardan. The most fertile and heavily populated part of the North-West Frontier Province is vital because it opens the gate to Peshawar. And if Pakistan loses control of Peshawar, the gateway for US supply lines to its troops in Afghanistan, it would be checkmate for the Western troops there.

Pakistan’s government capitulated to the Taliban over Swat and must now re-take the territory, re-impose the writ of the state and the rule of law. It can have no legitimacy if it does not impose its authority on Swat, but a military solution is not enough. Pakistan must establish a civil service structure and an independent judiciary in Swat and back it with full police authority.

The US, meanwhile, must stop hammering Pakistan, its ally, in public, as Mrs. Clinton has been doing. This merely fuels anti-Americanism in Pakistan. Barack Obama has said the most dangerous place in the world is Pakistan’s tribal areas. Why? Because if you lose them, then you lose Pakistan, followed by Afghanistan. So, Mr Obama, in private, should sit down with Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani President, and demand that in exchange for all the US aid he is promising ($5bn a year), Mr Zardari immediately imposes law and order in the Swat Valley, along with a genuine reform of the madrassa system. America has to understand that Pakistan requires a long-term commitment and a drastic change of strategy. The present hit-or-miss approach will not do. The stakes are just too high.

See original article here