Middle East Experts Lead Campus Talks

Middle East Experts Lead Campus Talks

Daily Tarheel
9/16/2004

Middle East experts to lead campus talks Islamic understanding will be focus

BY ERIN GIBSON ASSISTANT STATE & NATIONAL EDITOR September 14, 2004

Several experts on Middle Eastern affairs will be on campus tonight to call for open dialogue about United States-Islamic world relations.

The UNC chapter of Americans for Informed Democracy will host the event, titled "Hope not Hate," as the first in a series of events.

The visiting experts come with experience crossing time and distance.

Curtis Jones, former U.S. foreign service officer in the Middle East; Jibril Hough, chairman of the Islamic Political Party in America; and Rajai Al-Khanji, dean of the College of Arts at the University of Jordan, will share their knowledge and opinions at the meeting.

The goal for the meeting is to give people the chance to better understand Islamic culture and combat some incorrect stereotypes found on both sides.

"We have a saying in Arabic", Al-Khanji said in a Monday interview. "The distance between your eyes and your ears is short, but the distance between what you see and what you hear is great."

The panelists want people to listen to each other and try to understand and empathize with each other's needs.

"It is not necessary to leave in agreement," Hough said. "It's just important to understand where the other person is coming from."

Jones served in the U.S. Army and then worked for the U.S. State Department from 1943 to 1975 as a specialist in the language and politics of the Middle East. His job was to inform the U.S. government of other countries' political actions.

Jones was stationed in Lebanon in 1946 and said at that time, American policy was more popular than any other country's in the world. He said it was not until much later that the region divided and radicals turned against the United States because of its political policies.

But he said that while he was still in Lebanon, he witnessed the beginning of the change - a group of children were playing and started throwing rocks to express their dislike for Americans and their ways.

At the time, he said the Americans who witnessed the act thought it was funny - but not anymore.

Al-Khanji said each Islamic country has different opinions about U.S. policies, but a few terrorists have caused others to generalize about the entire Islamic population. He said the terrorists are using the Muslim religion as their reasons for attacks.

"Terrorism does not know ethnicity or color. Everyone should unite together to fight it," he said.

"Their religion does not represent my religion. Islam is not what they do. And if it is, I do not believe in it."

Al-Khanji now works with American studies at UJ. He said the program is designed to help Jordanian and other Islamic students better understand the American way of life.

Hough noted an anti-Islamic sentiment in the United States that imposes a threat to Islamic Americans - not just those in the Middle East.

Hough's party formed in May 2001 to politically organize all Middle Eastern descendants and immigrants in the United States after the 2000 election.

He said he wants to keep everyone together, working for a common cause, reaching goals important to their culture and preserving their rights as American citizens - especially at a time when the relationship between the two worlds is strained.

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.