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RUMI Forum event: Muslim-West dialogue and international relations
March 20, 2008
By Zainab Abdul-Rahim
On March 20, the Rumi Forum hosted Professor Tom Banchoff, political scientist and director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. Banchoff spoke about dialogue between Islamic countries and the West. He also went into more depth about a new report, Islam and the West: Annual Report on the State of Dialogue, produced by the World Economic Forum and Georgetown University.
Banchoff said the Berkley Center explores "religion…as it relates to global issues" and that it views "religion as a social and political force."
He then presented the annual report, which is available for public download at islamwest.org. The report was eventually released as a product of the Council of 100 leaders on West-Islamic dialogue, which dealt with political issues, human rights, and democracy, he said.
Banchoff raised the issue of how to talk about Islam in the West. He came to the conclusion that, over the last seven years, these terms have become a part of political discussion and media discourse. He said that we need to accept these terms, but that we must also define them carefully.
His next topic was the annual report, which tracks high-level activities conducted by organizations, including on-the-ground NGOs, and presents original survey data. According to Banchoff, the polls revealed that inhabitants of the Muslim world respect the West, but do not think that the Western world respects them.
Toward the end of his presentation, Banchoff posed the question of whether or not political scientists should make room for religious actors in their analysis of world affairs. Here, Islam raises some interesting quandaries. The question of "who speaks for Islam," he argued, cannot be definitively answered, given its character as "a radically decentralized faith" with "no clear hierarchy." At the same time, Banchoff pointed to the emergence of more salient international actors anchored in the Islamic tradition, for example the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which took a stand on the Pope's speech and the much-criticized Muhammad cartoons.
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