All Muslims are not like Osama Bin Laden, much like all Westerners are not like Dick Cheney, said Islamic studies professor Scott Alexander during a lecture Thursday.
In an effort to debunk myths about Islam, Students for Dialogue invited Alexander, of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Ill., to speak at Ohio State about depictions that are prevalent in today's society.
"We have to make intelligent assessments about the current problems in the world," Alexander said. "We must build bridges and embrace interreligious dialogue."
Yusuf Danisman, a sixth-year graduate student, is the president of Students for Dialogue, which was the recipient of the Multicultural Center Staff Intercultural Award. He said his goal for the group is to promote collaboration among believers of different religions.
"I e-mailed every group of religious associations at Ohio State to come join us and collaborate for this event," Danisman said. "But I don't know they never responded to my e-mail."
Alexander's lecture, "10 Things Every Thinking Person Should Consider," highlighted problematic areas of concern for Muslims throughout the world.
Alexander said the media are presenting misleading and misinformed information about Muslims and Islam. He said the media show the Muslim world through a lens of conflict, which often conflicts with real-world interaction with Muslims.
"I am fascinated by the disconnect between what I learned in class as a student versus what I was seeing in hearing in the media," Alexander said about the portrayal of Islam in the news.
Alexander said that Islam is a monolithic religion, meaning it is a faith lived out in a variety of different cultures and historical expressions. He said there have been many different interpretations of traditions, and, like human beings, Muslims are diverse and complex social actors.
"If we're told about a social actor we know nothing about, we get told a lot about stuff that has nothing to do with who that person really is," Alexander said.
He compared religion to nuclear energy because of the encompassing power they both have. Nuclear power, he said, can destroy entire cities and kill millions of people, but it can also power cities and provide for millions of people.
"Religions are not essentially good or evil, they are what we make them to be," he said.
Alexander spoke briefly about jihad. He said that classical jihad jurisprudence and modern so-called "jihadism" are two very different phenomena. Violence and war is never a good thing, but sometimes it is imperative to engage in an armed conflict, he said.
He mentioned four rules Muslims must follow in terms of conflict: do not injure non-combatants, do not scorch the earth, do not destruct the infrastructure, and if surrender is reached, give up immediately.
Historically, he said, the resentment in the Middle East has much to do with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
Alexander said that, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the United States was sympathetic to Afghanistan. Once the Soviets were forced out 10 years later, though, he said the U.S. abandoned Afghanistan and left the demolished country with no support - leading to the resentment that is still felt today toward the West.
But, he said, the acts of a few people should not tarnish the image of Muslims around the world.
Women in Islam have also been suffering, he said. Islam has in no way countered the patriarchy in Islam and it is unfortunate that when society is suffering, its weakest members suffer within, he said.
"We do a great disservice when we say this is a Muslim problem when really it is a social problem, not just prevalent only in Islamic culture," he said.
He also asked why the media only refer to acts of violence as "terrorism."
"Does it really matter if it's because of secular, theological ideology?" he said. "When people are killed, those acts against humanity are immoral and should not be linked specifically to any specific body of people, no matter who they claim to represent."
Last, Alexander said that "Islamophobia" is a virulent new form of racism in the West. He said this racism is very similar to anti-Semitism, and it prohibits fundamental religions to have peace with one another.
"The Muslim community in the West and in the rest of world has shown extraordinary resilience," he said. "And great good has come from a lot of great evil."
Alexander is the director of the Catholic-Muslim Studies Program at CTU, which is the largest graduate school for theological, seminary students in the U.S. He said his interest in Islam began in college when he began to study the relationship between Catholics and Muslims in the world.
Alexander is fluent in Arabic and has extensively studied the Qur'an and other religious manuscripts detailing the religion. Alexander is a devout Catholic.
"Now is the time to gently and compassionately create dialogue between the differing religions and cultures of the world," he said. He said people must embrace one another and stop correlating all Muslims to the violent acts of others.
Every religion, he said, has its extremists.
Mariam Khan can be reached at khan.197@osu.edu.