Sunday, October 24, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

UNLV'S SALTMAN CENTER FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION: Author's views on Islam fuel debate

Lecture critical of Muslim fundamentalism that thrives on disdain for U.S. policies

Author Dinesh D'Souza offers his views on Islamic culture Saturday at the UNLV Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Philip Pro is seated at left. Photo by Isaac Brekken.

Much of Dinesh D'Souza's career has been devoted to exacerbating, not resolving, conflict. So the author and former Reagan administration policy analyst said he was surprised when UNLV's Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution invited him to speak.

True to form, D'Souza's lecture on Saturday, "Islam and the West: A Clash of Civilizations," generated some conflict, dividing the approximate 250 audience members between those who spoke out against D'Souza's view of Islam and his admirers who heckled them.

But in an interview Friday, D'Souza noted, "True conflict resolution ... is not based on a denial of difference. Sometimes conflict resolution requires conflict."

During the lecture, D'Souza, a Christian native of India, outlined Islamic criticisms of the United States and rebutted them, drawing on arguments from his recent book, "What's So Great About America?"

D'Souza also gave his definition of America's war against terrorism, calling it a battle against Islamic fundamentalism, not acts of terrorism.

While the religion is more than 1,400 years old, the concept of Islamic terrorism is less than 25 years old, he noted. D'Souza attributed that to a growing "species" of Muslims who are attempting to explain the decline of their civilization through theology.

Their objective, he said, is to turn the people back to Allah and away from separation of church and state.

This subset of Islam, which is pitted against moderate Muslims, is fighting an intellectual war against America's foreign policy, he said. Their argument is that the United States is interested only in serving its own interests and not the world's.

D'Souza said they're partly right. For example, Americans elect a president that will serve the nation, he said.

But, he said, in the past 75 years the country's actions also have benefited the world.

He pointed to World War II, the liberation of Kuwait and the Cold War as foreign policy positions that have made the world a better place.

Islamic nations also criticize the United States for its inconsistent support of various regimes such as Saddam Hussein's, he said. In the 1980s, the United States backed Iraq in its war against Iran, he noted.

But he emphasized the necessity to pick the lesser of two evils, adding that Saddam Hussein was a much safer ally than the Ayatollah Khomeini.

D'Souza also defended America's culture and morality. He said he did not consider veiled Muslim women virtuous because their society has forced them to cover themselves.

"By allowing the citizens ... to choose the right path, our actions take on a deeply moral luster," he said. "Compelled virtue is no virtue at all."

The center provided other panelists to counter D'Souza's views.

Mujahid Ramadan, founder and president of Ramadan Ballard & Associates, a diversity consulting firm, noted the great Islamic contributions to modern society and emphasized that suicide bombers and terrorists are not Muslims.

"To say they are Muslim terrorists, I say, would be erroneous," he said.

He likened such a label to describing members of the Irish Republican Army as Christian terrorists. "We would not label Christianity that way," he said.

He and another panelist, Jean Sternlight, director of the conflict resolution center, advocated humanizing Muslims as a way to create peace.

"We have so much more in common than you would believe if you were dictated by this paradigm of clash of civilizations," Sternlight said, referring to the title of D'Souza's lecture.

During a 30-minute question-and-answer period at the end of the lecture, the majority of people who spoke had hostile remarks for D'Souza.

Aslam Abdullah, the director of Islamic Society of Nevada, said the lecture's title is erroneous because Islam and the West complement each other rather than clash.

"You are promoting a political agenda," he told D'Souza. "Islam owes a lot to the West, and the West owes a lot to Islam."

He also criticized D'Souza for misleading the public about Islamic culture when he does not speak its language or know its customs.

Like several other audience members who disagreed with D'Souza, Abdullah was heckled away from the microphone by D'Souza's fans, who told him to stop pontificating and preaching.