Muslims, Columbia, and New York

When I came to Columbia, I was thoroughly excited to be living in one of the most diverse cities and on one of the most diverse campuses in the world. I was looking forward to an unparalleled exchange of ideas with my peers from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and religions in a truly free and open environment. Having an interest in the Middle East and South Asia, I was also raring to engage in classes with professors who had a profound understanding of the region. However, in my second month on campus, there was graffiti vandalism directed against Muslims in one of SIPA’s (yes, SIPA, our most international school) bathrooms, the contents of which I will keep away from this piece.

However, much to my very pleasant surprise, the next two years turned out exactly as I hoped they would, and made me fall in love with both the city and Alma Mater all over again. And then came this past summer.

An eruption of maddening hype and debate has engulfed this country with the Park51 mosque project, located a few blocks from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that indiscriminately killed people. The debate that has unfolded this summer makes me question whether intelligence and superior education can really make a people or nation better or less ignorant.

My disillusionment with this process has been within the circles of academics and other intelligent, educated people. There seems to be a chronic lack of acceptance of the fact that people are a product of their circumstances, and not of obscure parts that may or may not be a part of the doctrine of their family religion/sect. There is a lack of acknowledgement that academia has constructed cookie-cutter molds that are not a reflection of reality. This dilutes the debate and creates enormous pre-judgments in otherwise educated and intelligent people’s minds. It is perhaps a manifestation of these judgments that presents itself in this summer’s ruckus-like debate.

Even those who come to defend Muslims and Islam against this tirade employ mechanisms that are left wanting. It is commonplace to hear somebody praise La Convivencia—the great coexistence that was instituted by the Umayyad Muslim rulers of Spain. This practice allowed the development of some of the greatest minds in history, including Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd, and the great Jewish scholar, Musa bin Maimon (Maimonides)—both of whom we read in Columbia’s Core Curriculum. However, even the Umayyad rulers of Spain, while great in their own right, cannot come to be seen as the standard bearers of Islam’s true teachings. To give but one example, the Umayyads converted some churches into mosques, something Islam’s critics frequently cite in their claims that Islam is based in conquest. However, it is important to distinguish between what a dynastic empire of Muslims did from Islam itself. When the Prophet Muhammad’s second successor Umar bin Khattab conquered Jerusalem and was invited by Sophronius, the patriarch of the city, to receive the key, he refused to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, despite the patriarch’s insistence. He feared that this would set a bad precedent—he did not want future Muslims to convert churches into mosques.

The dialogue on Islam must change in this country if it will change in the world at all. The United States represents the pinnacle of human knowledge and is on the vanguard of new ideas—we have the best universities on earth. We must therefore be more rigorous, less rigid, and more nuanced in our understanding of the world. For me, it isn’t even about the construction of Park51 anymore. It’s really about intelligent analysis and academic rigor, which I feel is missing from the world, New York, and, yes, even Columbia, today.

The author is a senior majoring in economics and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies.