Akbar Ahmed, November 22, 2002

Like many Americans and most non-Americans I underestimated George W. Bush.

In the media he draws criticism ranging from his poor vocabulary and grammar to comparisons, grossly unfair, with Hitler.

Recently at the White House, he was tackling one of the main challenges facing his society: The relationship with and understanding of Islam. He was doing it the way he knew best: head on.

On Nov. 7, Bush invited Muslim ambassadors and a few other guests for an iftaar dinner -- the breaking of the Muslim fast at sunset.

We assembled shortly before the breaking of the fast. It was prayer time and I wondered whether and where prayer would be held. At the appropriate time I heard the aazan, the call to prayers. It was a beautiful voice. I looked around to see who was calling us to prayer, expecting a traditional religious leader. I was startled to see the person calling the prayer. It was a young captain of the U.S. Air Force.

After the prayer, as we walked to the dining room though the corridors, I glanced outside to see a thin, sparkling, silver crescent in a clear blue sky. It was an auspicious sign. There were other equally startling juxtapositions that evening. The president greeted Imam Hassan Qazwani from Detroit with obvious warmth embracing him.

Bush has many close Muslim friends, like Malik Hasan and Seeme Hasan -- who were there. The Hasans, from Colorado, had told me Bush was a warm and intelligent man. Not an enemy of Islam as portrayed by some in the media.

For me the most significant aspect of Bush's address was his reference to Abraham: "We see in Islam a religion that traces its origin back to God's call on Abraham. We share your belief in God's justice, and your insistence on man's moral responsibility."

As I was involved in the First Abraham Summit, an initiative taken by the Washington Hebrew Congregation, I was sensitive to the reference to Abraham. It is a significant acknowledgment that Islam falls within the Judeo-Christian tradition; that all three religions refer to Abraham as a central patriarch and prophet; that for all the differences and problems and controversies within and between the three religions they are essentially part of the same religious family.

This was no mere diplomatic nuance Bush was pointing out but a major statement.

These were important points the president needed to make -- to the Muslim world and to Americans -- and he made them.

I was privileged to be seated at Bush's table and was able to take part in the conversation. Over dinner he acknowledged that like most Americans he was relatively unfamiliar with Islam before September 2001. Slowly but surely he was now becoming involved in the process of understanding.

During dinner, I noted that while Bush himself had taken some welcome steps forward, for example, by visiting the Islamic Center, which had calmed Muslims' fears and sense of alienation, his work had been made more difficult by those who had chosen to abuse the Prophet of Islam. The Muslim street would not differentiate what Bush said and what eminent religious figures associated with him said. The perception was that America was waging a war against Islam.

I said that however liberal or orthodox a Muslim is, he or she will always respect the Prophet of Islam. This is not only a theological but also cultural compulsion for Muslims. Attacking the Prophet would pit Muslims against Americans.

At a time when Bush is contemplating an invasion of a Muslim country, Iraq, amid dire warnings of enflaming public opinion in the Muslim world, the attacks on the Prophet appeared surreal.

A few days later, for the first time, Bush took on the religious leaders who support him for their criticism of Islam. This in itself is a significant shift -- both for him and the society he represented.

Unfortunately, next morning, the media chose not to pick up Bush's address. Or perhaps they failed to understand its full theological significance. The news was barely covered and only in the context of a dinner during the month of Ramadan at the White House. There, too, the importance of the news was blunted by comparisons to earlier receptions already arranged by the Clintons.

The warm embrace of the president of the United States to a Shia imam in his traditional robes, the azaan called by an officer of the U.S. Air Force, the president placing Islam firmly within the Abrahamic tradition, the openness and keenness of Bush to learn about Islam -- I was at a moment in history when America and Islam were beginning to discover each other in a more nuanced and sophisticated way than the cardboard stereotypes that had dominated the land after September.

Professor Akbar S. Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, D.C., is author of "Islam Today: A Short Introduction to the Muslim World," published by I.B. Tauris.

Copyright 2002 Religion News Service. Used by permission.