WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.299 Welcome again to our Interfaiths podcast for 00:00:04.299 --> 00:00:07.960 our FIU online course. My name is Professor Iqbal 00:00:07.960 --> 00:00:09.900 Akhtar in the Department of Religious Studies 00:00:09.900 --> 00:00:11.740 and Politics and International Relations, and 00:00:11.740 --> 00:00:14.599 we're very honored today to have Professor Juan 00:00:14.599 --> 00:00:17.960 Cole at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 00:00:18.019 --> 00:00:21.199 who is one of the top scholars of the Islamic 00:00:21.199 --> 00:00:24.679 world, Middle East, with us here today. He's 00:00:24.679 --> 00:00:26.960 here for a conference. We were very lucky to 00:00:26.960 --> 00:00:31.019 grab him for a few minutes. So I think let's 00:00:31.019 --> 00:00:33.039 get started. Maybe talk to us a little bit about 00:00:33.039 --> 00:00:36.920 your background and kind of how you got, maybe 00:00:36.920 --> 00:00:40.020 a little bit about kind of where you grew up 00:00:40.020 --> 00:00:43.619 and how you, you know, what took you on this 00:00:43.619 --> 00:00:46.280 path. I know you went on a Fulbright to India 00:00:46.280 --> 00:00:49.869 eventually, but kind of. What was kind of your 00:00:49.869 --> 00:00:52.170 early experiences that might have geared you 00:00:52.170 --> 00:00:54.649 towards kind of this type of intellectual journey? 00:00:55.070 --> 00:00:59.270 Sure. My father was in the U .S. military. And 00:00:59.270 --> 00:01:03.409 I grew up traveling. I went to 12 schools in 00:01:03.409 --> 00:01:08.769 12 years. And we had two long tours in Europe, 00:01:08.790 --> 00:01:15.870 in France. And when I was a teenager, we had 00:01:15.870 --> 00:01:21.000 a posting. a year and a half in Eritrea. It was 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:26.299 then part of Ethiopia. Eritrea is a multicultural 00:01:26.299 --> 00:01:38.599 place. It's probably a third Muslim. It's a multicultural 00:01:38.599 --> 00:01:41.180 place, Eritrea. About one -third Muslim, two 00:01:41.180 --> 00:01:45.079 -thirds Christian. There were mosques and you 00:01:45.079 --> 00:01:50.060 heard the call to prayer and we had Eritrean 00:01:50.060 --> 00:01:55.500 Muslim friends. So that was my first serious 00:01:55.500 --> 00:02:00.859 contact with the Muslim world there in the Horn 00:02:00.859 --> 00:02:07.040 of Africa. And then when I got back to the States, 00:02:07.120 --> 00:02:12.840 it was the late 60s. But still the 60s. Right. 00:02:13.020 --> 00:02:16.379 So, you know, my generation was interested in 00:02:16.379 --> 00:02:20.159 spirituality, alternative states of consciousness. 00:02:20.340 --> 00:02:25.439 I read a lot about Sufism, for instance. And 00:02:25.439 --> 00:02:33.360 so when I went to college at Northwestern, I 00:02:33.360 --> 00:02:38.530 majored in history of religions. I was very interested 00:02:38.530 --> 00:02:42.870 in all the world religions, but especially, I 00:02:42.870 --> 00:02:48.129 would say, in Asian ones. So Islam and Hinduism 00:02:48.129 --> 00:02:51.169 and Buddhism were special interests of mine. 00:02:52.250 --> 00:02:58.110 And I began actually taking Arabic when I was 00:02:58.110 --> 00:03:00.449 an undergraduate. I was only 19 when I started. 00:03:01.039 --> 00:03:03.900 This is early for most Americans. Of course. 00:03:04.199 --> 00:03:06.520 Often they don't get to Arabic until they're 00:03:06.520 --> 00:03:09.479 already graduate students. I think that was something 00:03:09.479 --> 00:03:12.300 that helped me as I had early exposure to it. 00:03:13.879 --> 00:03:20.120 So we had a wonderful program at Northwestern 00:03:20.120 --> 00:03:23.120 called the Traveling Scholars. It had been endowed 00:03:23.120 --> 00:03:29.000 by an alumnus. I was able to, all of us, it was 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:31.400 a competition. So you designed a research project. 00:03:31.680 --> 00:03:35.240 I had a friend who designed a project on Dickens' 00:03:35.259 --> 00:03:37.780 London. So he would go around to the places that 00:03:37.780 --> 00:03:41.120 were described in the novels and set it into 00:03:41.120 --> 00:03:44.960 context. So I put together a project on Christian 00:03:44.960 --> 00:03:52.120 -Muslim dialogue in Lebanon. After the Second 00:03:52.120 --> 00:03:57.020 Vatican Council, there was an encouragement by 00:03:57.020 --> 00:04:00.360 the Catholic Church of dialogue with the other 00:04:00.360 --> 00:04:05.659 religions. And the Second Vatican Council's documents 00:04:05.659 --> 00:04:10.780 about Islam are actually quite positive and talks 00:04:10.780 --> 00:04:15.139 about, from a Catholic point of view, it talks 00:04:15.139 --> 00:04:19.000 about the light of Christ being present in Islam, 00:04:19.240 --> 00:04:22.139 praises Muslims for honoring Jesus and Mary. 00:04:22.930 --> 00:04:26.129 It was a document you couldn't have imagined 00:04:26.129 --> 00:04:31.370 it a century before. And so the church was encouraging 00:04:31.370 --> 00:04:35.050 Catholic intellectuals to engage with their Muslim 00:04:35.050 --> 00:04:37.350 counterparts. And of course, Lebanon was a perfect 00:04:37.350 --> 00:04:41.850 place for this. So there were a series of dialogue 00:04:41.850 --> 00:04:45.569 meetings and some publications came out of it. 00:04:45.629 --> 00:04:49.550 Some high -powered Lebanese... intellectuals 00:04:49.550 --> 00:04:53.410 were involved. So I had read about it and I wanted 00:04:53.410 --> 00:04:56.269 to go and interview the principals, the participants, 00:04:56.370 --> 00:04:59.610 and I was able to get this grant from Northwestern 00:04:59.610 --> 00:05:04.149 to go. I had already started Modern Standard 00:05:04.149 --> 00:05:09.269 Arabic, but I didn't speak Arabic. I was doing 00:05:09.269 --> 00:05:12.910 it as a book language, but when I was in Beirut 00:05:13.550 --> 00:05:18.009 I was able to take a class in colloquial Lebanese 00:05:18.009 --> 00:05:20.250 Arabic so that I could actually learn to speak 00:05:20.250 --> 00:05:23.129 the language. When I first arrived in Lebanon, 00:05:23.189 --> 00:05:26.209 I would say things from my modern standard Arabic. 00:05:27.089 --> 00:05:29.550 People would fall down laughing. It's like speaking 00:05:29.550 --> 00:05:36.009 Shakespearean English to someone. Well, so I 00:05:36.009 --> 00:05:38.569 didn't know this at the time, but I was already 00:05:38.569 --> 00:05:42.060 set on a path because I had a friend in Cairo 00:05:42.060 --> 00:05:47.459 who was kind of a slacker, and I met him a few 00:05:47.459 --> 00:05:49.779 years later, and he was wearing a business suit 00:05:49.779 --> 00:05:52.980 and had a Belize. And I said, dude, what happened 00:05:52.980 --> 00:05:56.860 to you? It was like a pothead originally. So 00:05:56.860 --> 00:06:00.779 he said, well, you know, we studied Arabic. I 00:06:00.779 --> 00:06:03.160 said, yes. He said, you don't realize it at the 00:06:03.160 --> 00:06:06.139 time, but after a while, when you study something 00:06:06.139 --> 00:06:08.259 like Arabic, it's what you've got going for you. 00:06:09.550 --> 00:06:12.790 And so he had ended up being hired to teach Arabic 00:06:12.790 --> 00:06:19.110 as a second language. And this is what happened 00:06:19.110 --> 00:06:22.889 to me, is that scholarship runs along language 00:06:22.889 --> 00:06:26.389 lines. And if you're going to be a scholar of 00:06:26.389 --> 00:06:29.089 Buddhism, then you would want to know Sanskrit 00:06:29.089 --> 00:06:32.250 and Chinese and Japanese and so forth. So since 00:06:32.250 --> 00:06:36.009 I had decided to learn Arabic, it's what I had 00:06:36.009 --> 00:06:41.019 going for me. Interesting. Okay. I mean, just 00:06:41.019 --> 00:06:44.920 kind of a tangent, that period where in the 60s, 00:06:44.920 --> 00:06:46.360 where people were experimenting with different 00:06:46.360 --> 00:06:50.019 types of spirituality. I mean, it seems that 00:06:50.019 --> 00:06:54.040 there was a point in American history where Sufism 00:06:54.040 --> 00:06:57.019 actually was quite viable as kind of one of these 00:06:57.019 --> 00:06:59.079 sort of alternative pathways. I mean, I think 00:06:59.079 --> 00:07:02.420 what ends up happening, like Sufism, Hinduism, 00:07:02.459 --> 00:07:06.129 and Buddhism. It seems like they were some of 00:07:06.129 --> 00:07:08.110 the three biggest ones, I think, that were kind 00:07:08.110 --> 00:07:10.470 of like competing for the spirituality. And it 00:07:10.470 --> 00:07:12.170 seems like Buddhism eventually ends up winning 00:07:12.170 --> 00:07:15.410 as kind of like the main one, I think. But Sufism, 00:07:15.449 --> 00:07:19.449 do you feel that, did it not really resonate 00:07:19.449 --> 00:07:25.990 with Americans because of the inherent qualities 00:07:25.990 --> 00:07:28.189 of Sufism? Or do you think it was the geopolitics 00:07:28.189 --> 00:07:30.889 of like Iran and things like that that kind of 00:07:30.889 --> 00:07:37.439 made it less? appealing to Americans. Well, it's 00:07:37.439 --> 00:07:40.980 true that I think there's a lot more awareness 00:07:40.980 --> 00:07:44.759 of and interest in Buddhism among that community 00:07:44.759 --> 00:07:47.779 of Americans who are interested in Eastern religions. 00:07:48.560 --> 00:07:51.720 I don't think the Sufism ever really went away, 00:07:51.779 --> 00:07:57.579 though. There's a small minority of people who... 00:07:58.860 --> 00:08:01.620 I mean, of course, there are many immigrant Sufis, 00:08:01.620 --> 00:08:03.740 like the Senegalese are all Sufis and so forth. 00:08:04.180 --> 00:08:09.079 But among native -born Americans, there's a certain 00:08:09.079 --> 00:08:13.220 interest in it, even to this day. There are directories 00:08:13.220 --> 00:08:15.800 of Sufi organizations in all the major cities 00:08:15.800 --> 00:08:18.439 and so forth. But it's a relatively small phenomenon. 00:08:18.459 --> 00:08:22.480 You're right, compared to Buddhism. And I couldn't 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:25.399 tell you why. You know, this is one of the problems 00:08:25.399 --> 00:08:28.060 in the history of religions is that we know things 00:08:28.060 --> 00:08:33.059 change, but people don't typically write in their 00:08:33.059 --> 00:08:35.440 diary the reasons for which they have made these 00:08:35.440 --> 00:08:38.740 changes. So I think that would be a big research 00:08:38.740 --> 00:08:41.320 project to do the interviews. And of course, 00:08:41.320 --> 00:08:43.659 we're trying to answer a negative. Right, exactly. 00:08:43.659 --> 00:08:48.419 Why it didn't happen, exactly. So you spent this 00:08:48.419 --> 00:08:52.600 time in... In Lebanon, looking at Christian -Muslim 00:08:52.600 --> 00:08:56.460 relations, what were some takeaways from that 00:08:56.460 --> 00:08:58.840 experience? What did you notice or understand? 00:08:59.059 --> 00:09:02.899 What were the challenges that Vatican II presented 00:09:02.899 --> 00:09:06.720 to the relationship between Christians and Muslims? 00:09:06.980 --> 00:09:12.080 Christians and Muslims in Lebanon. Well, in Lebanon, 00:09:12.139 --> 00:09:17.240 religion was very siloed. And even I found, to 00:09:17.240 --> 00:09:20.539 my amazement, That I knew much more about Islam 00:09:20.539 --> 00:09:23.120 than most Christian Lebanese did. They don't 00:09:23.120 --> 00:09:25.940 talk to their Muslim neighbors about religion. 00:09:26.679 --> 00:09:30.620 So then they're ignorant. And like the Lebanese 00:09:30.620 --> 00:09:33.600 Muslims often didn't know very much about Christianity. 00:09:34.080 --> 00:09:37.080 That was why the dialogue movement was useful. 00:09:39.480 --> 00:09:42.500 That was one of the takeaways, was how siloed 00:09:42.500 --> 00:09:45.580 people can be and how ignorant they can be even 00:09:45.580 --> 00:09:49.240 of a reality that lives across the hall from 00:09:49.240 --> 00:09:51.100 them. That's what I've learned generally, I think, 00:09:51.139 --> 00:09:53.539 in terms of my own research in Africa and other 00:09:53.539 --> 00:10:00.159 places, is that you have very multi -ethnic, 00:10:00.200 --> 00:10:03.139 multi -religious societies, but people simply 00:10:03.139 --> 00:10:06.710 do not... talk about religion or really engage 00:10:06.710 --> 00:10:08.629 theologically at all and i think that's a very 00:10:08.629 --> 00:10:10.490 modern phenomenon i think that really comes out 00:10:10.490 --> 00:10:12.509 of kind of the modern interfaith movement this 00:10:12.509 --> 00:10:14.250 idea that you can actually talk about your religion 00:10:14.250 --> 00:10:17.590 to other people in a way that is also um not 00:10:17.590 --> 00:10:19.549 proselytizing because i think that's another 00:10:19.549 --> 00:10:21.990 way that muslims have kind of dealt with christianity 00:10:21.990 --> 00:10:23.070 is they're like okay well they're just trying 00:10:23.070 --> 00:10:25.450 to convert me or you know but actually just being 00:10:25.450 --> 00:10:27.330 able to understand just being able to understand 00:10:27.330 --> 00:10:30.190 so that you have a more harmonious sort of uh 00:10:30.190 --> 00:10:32.950 world right and a better understanding rather 00:10:32.950 --> 00:10:36.159 than just prejudice you know That's right. Another 00:10:36.159 --> 00:10:40.500 takeaway was that as I did my research on this 00:10:40.500 --> 00:10:43.500 dialogue movement, I found I was hobbled by not 00:10:43.500 --> 00:10:47.419 knowing enough history. I needed to know more 00:10:47.419 --> 00:10:49.279 about the history of the Maronite Church, for 00:10:49.279 --> 00:10:53.940 instance, and the history of Islam. And so I 00:10:53.940 --> 00:10:58.940 spent a lot of time reading history. I was a 00:10:58.940 --> 00:11:01.500 religion major, so it hadn't originally occurred 00:11:01.500 --> 00:11:03.860 to me. Focusing more on the theology. Yeah. And 00:11:03.860 --> 00:11:10.299 then I liked reading the history. So it was one 00:11:10.299 --> 00:11:12.759 of my transitions to being a historian. Talk 00:11:12.759 --> 00:11:17.059 a little bit about that transition. Well, I think 00:11:17.059 --> 00:11:19.240 the nail in the coffin was the Lebanese Civil 00:11:19.240 --> 00:11:24.220 War. Of course. After being graduated from Northwestern 00:11:24.220 --> 00:11:29.220 in 1975, I went back to Lebanon. to try to do 00:11:29.220 --> 00:11:32.799 an MA in religion at the American University 00:11:32.799 --> 00:11:37.440 in Beirut. They were the only institution in 00:11:37.440 --> 00:11:40.519 the Middle East that offered a religion degree. 00:11:41.039 --> 00:11:45.340 Not a seminary kind of degree, but the history 00:11:45.340 --> 00:11:48.100 of religions as an academic discipline was actually 00:11:48.100 --> 00:11:51.120 practiced in Lebanon. It really wasn't allowed 00:11:51.120 --> 00:11:54.759 in Egypt. There was opposition from some of the 00:11:54.759 --> 00:11:59.459 more hidebound clerics to the whole idea. And 00:11:59.459 --> 00:12:04.399 so, but when I got to the campus, the war had 00:12:04.399 --> 00:12:09.639 broken out. And there was a big battle for control 00:12:09.639 --> 00:12:14.960 of the hotels downtown. You know how in the old 00:12:14.960 --> 00:12:17.460 World War II movies, they talk about the need 00:12:17.460 --> 00:12:20.100 to take the hill? Right. So it's because it's 00:12:20.100 --> 00:12:23.539 high and you can dominate. the surrounding area 00:12:23.539 --> 00:12:26.600 from it, set up mortars and stuff. The same thing 00:12:26.600 --> 00:12:28.899 is true of tall buildings in modern urban warfare. 00:12:29.179 --> 00:12:31.360 So they were fighting for control of these tall 00:12:31.360 --> 00:12:35.639 buildings. You know, nice tourist hotels, and 00:12:35.639 --> 00:12:38.799 they gradually looked like Swiss cheese. You 00:12:38.799 --> 00:12:41.240 could see this happening from the campus of the 00:12:41.240 --> 00:12:43.379 American University of Beirut. It's up high. 00:12:43.519 --> 00:12:48.120 You could look down on this. You could see the 00:12:48.120 --> 00:12:52.220 trails of the rockets and so forth. So they called 00:12:52.220 --> 00:12:57.399 us all together and said, go away. The university 00:12:57.399 --> 00:13:00.320 is not going to open this year. And we might 00:13:00.320 --> 00:13:04.899 see you next fall if things settle down. So I 00:13:04.899 --> 00:13:09.360 went to Jordan for a while and then applied to 00:13:09.360 --> 00:13:11.799 the American University in Cairo. I saw the writing 00:13:11.799 --> 00:13:14.529 on the wall. It's not going to end any time soon. 00:13:14.529 --> 00:13:17.750 Yeah, Beirut was not going to settle down. And 00:13:17.750 --> 00:13:19.529 so I went to the American University in Cairo 00:13:19.529 --> 00:13:22.629 for my MA. And I was determined to do an MA in 00:13:22.629 --> 00:13:25.330 the area because I wanted to get my Arabic near 00:13:25.330 --> 00:13:28.370 native fluent. And you can't do that very easily 00:13:28.370 --> 00:13:31.690 in the United States. And in addition to which, 00:13:31.809 --> 00:13:38.549 I was reacting against the American. academic 00:13:38.549 --> 00:13:41.049 tradition. People would go and do a nine -month 00:13:41.049 --> 00:13:43.250 Fulbright semester and come back, and then they 00:13:43.250 --> 00:13:45.129 would be an expert in that for the rest of their 00:13:45.129 --> 00:13:46.769 lives, and they would mostly live in the United 00:13:46.769 --> 00:13:49.830 States. I wanted to know the ins and outs. I 00:13:49.830 --> 00:13:52.990 wanted to get deep. So I ended up living almost 00:13:52.990 --> 00:13:58.129 five years from the time I went to Beirut at 00:13:58.129 --> 00:14:00.450 first until I finally came back to the United 00:14:00.450 --> 00:14:04.590 States in the region. So I did an MA in Cairo. 00:14:06.059 --> 00:14:09.279 They didn't have a religion program. They did 00:14:09.279 --> 00:14:16.320 have a history program. So I moved to history. 00:14:16.620 --> 00:14:21.000 I worked on Muslim reformers of the 19th century, 00:14:21.299 --> 00:14:24.759 but from a historical point of view rather than 00:14:24.759 --> 00:14:29.320 a theological one. Then when I ultimately went 00:14:29.320 --> 00:14:31.620 to UCLA, I'd already gotten some training as 00:14:31.620 --> 00:14:34.879 a historian. I started to think of that as my 00:14:34.879 --> 00:14:38.259 discipline. I also have to tell you that I reacted 00:14:38.259 --> 00:14:41.519 a little bit against the disciplinary underlying 00:14:41.519 --> 00:14:45.580 ideas of the history of religions as I was taught 00:14:45.580 --> 00:14:48.460 it as an undergraduate. We were under the shadow 00:14:48.460 --> 00:14:52.259 of the University of Chicago. And philosophically 00:14:52.259 --> 00:14:56.029 speaking, It was phenomenology of religion that 00:14:56.029 --> 00:15:00.129 was ascendant, which is a little bit ahistorical. 00:15:00.429 --> 00:15:04.409 It was all about myth cycles and things like 00:15:04.409 --> 00:15:06.610 that. First of all, it wasn't very relevant to 00:15:06.610 --> 00:15:11.289 Islamic studies. Mostly it developed out of Hinduism 00:15:11.289 --> 00:15:16.929 and Christianity and Buddhism. And I don't know 00:15:16.929 --> 00:15:19.149 what myth cycles are there in Islam. I mean, 00:15:19.169 --> 00:15:24.980 that's silly. But then also phenomenology seemed 00:15:24.980 --> 00:15:28.059 to be kind of detached from concrete reality. 00:15:28.480 --> 00:15:34.080 And I became interested in the way that history 00:15:34.080 --> 00:15:38.200 is researched and the use of archives and personal 00:15:38.200 --> 00:15:43.100 papers and getting deep into the details of a 00:15:43.100 --> 00:15:46.799 person's mind and thought at a level that I think 00:15:46.799 --> 00:15:52.240 phenomenology doesn't allow. I think also just 00:15:52.240 --> 00:15:55.139 personally and philosophically, I moved to being 00:15:55.139 --> 00:15:59.919 a historian. Okay. That's very interesting. So 00:15:59.919 --> 00:16:05.200 you ended up going on a Fulbright? Well, I went 00:16:05.200 --> 00:16:10.500 to UCLA for my PhD work, and I initially had 00:16:10.500 --> 00:16:13.059 gone back to Lebanon, by the way, in the meantime, 00:16:13.240 --> 00:16:18.870 and I worked for a newspaper there. Because we 00:16:18.870 --> 00:16:20.950 thought the Lebanese Civil War might be over 00:16:20.950 --> 00:16:25.870 in 78, and then it wasn't. So I was working for 00:16:25.870 --> 00:16:30.690 this newspaper. Sometimes we couldn't put the 00:16:30.690 --> 00:16:34.690 paper to bed because Syrian artillery had knocked 00:16:34.690 --> 00:16:37.230 out the electricity or things like that happened. 00:16:37.769 --> 00:16:42.309 And so I could see there wasn't a future for 00:16:42.309 --> 00:16:44.850 me as a newspaperman in Beirut. And I went to 00:16:44.850 --> 00:16:49.720 UCLA to do a PhD. But when I was in Beirut, it 00:16:49.720 --> 00:16:53.080 was during the Iranian Revolution. And the Iranian 00:16:53.080 --> 00:16:55.600 Revolution was a local story in Beirut because 00:16:55.600 --> 00:16:58.379 it has a large Shiite population and the Shiites 00:16:58.379 --> 00:17:02.159 mobilized. And so our newspaper covered these 00:17:02.159 --> 00:17:05.000 kinds of things. I was working mainly as a translator 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:06.980 for the newspaper. I would take the Arabic wire 00:17:06.980 --> 00:17:12.440 services and put them into English. And so I 00:17:12.440 --> 00:17:15.240 followed the Iranian Revolution very closely. 00:17:15.920 --> 00:17:23.039 and its local reverberations in Lebanon. So I 00:17:23.039 --> 00:17:25.900 initially went to UCLA because it had the best 00:17:25.900 --> 00:17:28.799 Iranian studies program in the country. And I 00:17:28.799 --> 00:17:32.200 was going to do my dissertation on Iran. And 00:17:32.200 --> 00:17:34.220 that was perfectly plausible. Even after the 00:17:34.220 --> 00:17:37.099 revolution in the summer of 1979, a lot of American 00:17:37.099 --> 00:17:40.880 academics went to Iran for research and relations 00:17:40.880 --> 00:17:43.960 between the two countries weren't at a nadir. 00:17:45.200 --> 00:17:50.480 Then the hostage crisis happened. And these guerrilla 00:17:50.480 --> 00:17:56.160 groups took American diplomats hostage. And it 00:17:56.160 --> 00:18:01.380 was a crisis for the next year and a half. Well, 00:18:01.519 --> 00:18:05.099 no embassy, no visas, no diplomatic relations. 00:18:05.279 --> 00:18:08.940 I couldn't do research in Iran. But I had done 00:18:08.940 --> 00:18:13.789 a lot of background research. towards a dissertation 00:18:13.789 --> 00:18:17.849 on what I was interested in was the rise of the 00:18:17.849 --> 00:18:22.609 Shiite clergy as a ruling class. Where does that 00:18:22.609 --> 00:18:24.690 come from? Because there isn't any other modern 00:18:24.690 --> 00:18:28.190 country where the clerics came to power. There 00:18:28.190 --> 00:18:30.569 have been places like Franco's Spain where they 00:18:30.569 --> 00:18:34.470 were very influential. Seize power. Seize power 00:18:34.470 --> 00:18:36.670 as a group in the same way that the military 00:18:36.670 --> 00:18:40.690 seizes power. That seems strange and I wondered 00:18:40.690 --> 00:18:42.369 if there's something about Shiite traditions 00:18:42.369 --> 00:18:46.150 that helped to explain how it could happen. So 00:18:46.150 --> 00:18:50.509 I was reluctant to let go of the subject. I thought, 00:18:50.509 --> 00:18:52.990 well, maybe I can do it as a manuscript library 00:18:52.990 --> 00:18:55.289 project. So I went to the manuscript library 00:18:55.289 --> 00:19:00.289 catalogs. As I got over into the India catalogs, 00:19:00.289 --> 00:19:04.789 I was ignorant about this at first. I discovered 00:19:04.789 --> 00:19:10.789 that there had been Shiite kingdoms in India, 00:19:10.950 --> 00:19:14.630 Shiite ruled kingdoms in India between the fall 00:19:14.630 --> 00:19:18.069 of the Mughals and the rise of the British. And 00:19:18.069 --> 00:19:21.609 the manuscript catalogs demonstrated that these 00:19:21.609 --> 00:19:25.109 Shiite ruled kingdoms had generated a lot of 00:19:25.109 --> 00:19:28.549 writing. They gave patronage to clergy to write 00:19:28.549 --> 00:19:31.609 things and so forth. And the manuscripts were 00:19:31.609 --> 00:19:35.000 sitting there. And I went to the secondary literature. 00:19:35.140 --> 00:19:37.900 I didn't find anything about it. It was not in 00:19:37.900 --> 00:19:39.559 the literature. There was an unknown subject. 00:19:39.839 --> 00:19:42.099 Well, that's what you want as an PhD student. 00:19:42.559 --> 00:19:45.940 This is a place you can make your mark. So, yeah, 00:19:46.039 --> 00:19:50.119 I applied for a Fulbright and a Social Science 00:19:50.119 --> 00:19:54.220 Research Council grants, and they accepted my 00:19:54.220 --> 00:19:57.480 application and sent me off to South Asia. So 00:19:57.480 --> 00:20:02.420 that was actually... Unexpected but also a pleasant 00:20:02.420 --> 00:20:06.740 idea because remember I was interested in Eastern 00:20:06.740 --> 00:20:10.160 religions and India and Gandhi as a teenager 00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:14.619 in the late 60s. So there was a mystique of India 00:20:14.619 --> 00:20:19.279 and I hadn't thought about being able to combine 00:20:19.279 --> 00:20:22.380 my interest in the Middle East and Islam with 00:20:22.380 --> 00:20:24.519 an interest in India. But here was the perfect 00:20:24.519 --> 00:20:28.700 opportunity. So I went off to Lucknow in Uttar 00:20:28.700 --> 00:20:33.220 Pradesh and made contact with the local Shiites. 00:20:34.759 --> 00:20:37.480 Some of them were at the university as professors, 00:20:37.579 --> 00:20:40.079 and so they could understand what I was doing 00:20:40.079 --> 00:20:44.279 and was interested in. opened their hearts to 00:20:44.279 --> 00:20:47.660 me, and more importantly, their libraries, including 00:20:47.660 --> 00:20:52.160 manuscripts. Now, I was from a generation of 00:20:52.160 --> 00:20:56.539 scholars of Islamics and the Middle East who 00:20:56.539 --> 00:21:02.400 were impatient with depending mainly on French 00:21:02.400 --> 00:21:06.880 and British archives for the modern period as 00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:11.210 your sources. And it hadn't really been known, 00:21:11.349 --> 00:21:15.569 I think, in the 60s, to the degree to which a 00:21:15.569 --> 00:21:19.329 very rich manuscript tradition survives. Only 00:21:19.329 --> 00:21:22.750 a small proportion of it ever was printed. But 00:21:22.750 --> 00:21:27.589 you could find these handwritten books produced 00:21:27.589 --> 00:21:34.470 in 1750 and 1790 and 1830. And since they're 00:21:34.470 --> 00:21:38.140 often unique, there was... no copy of them made, 00:21:38.259 --> 00:21:41.720 you had to go to where they were held in order 00:21:41.720 --> 00:21:46.960 to use them. And so I was not alone in this. 00:21:47.099 --> 00:21:49.880 There were Peter Grant and others were beginning 00:21:49.880 --> 00:21:52.359 to use these kinds of materials and to make it 00:21:52.359 --> 00:21:55.700 known that they existed. And so I was able to 00:21:55.700 --> 00:21:58.660 write my dissertation primarily out of these 00:21:58.660 --> 00:22:02.180 primary sources written by Indians, often in 00:22:02.180 --> 00:22:05.359 Arabic and Persian, which Mostly Indians don't 00:22:05.359 --> 00:22:09.460 read Arabic anymore. They know to recite the 00:22:09.460 --> 00:22:13.160 Quran, but they wouldn't read a book in it. And 00:22:13.160 --> 00:22:16.599 so I was doing things that even local scholars 00:22:16.599 --> 00:22:20.099 maybe wouldn't have done. And I was able to write 00:22:20.099 --> 00:22:26.940 a history of Shiite religion and religious practices 00:22:26.940 --> 00:22:30.339 in North India in the 18th and 19th century. 00:22:32.250 --> 00:22:35.549 historians had treated this period in this place, 00:22:35.789 --> 00:22:40.210 they'd mostly treated it as a chess piece in 00:22:40.210 --> 00:22:44.630 the British conquest of India, and it was all 00:22:44.630 --> 00:22:48.609 about diplomacy and economics sometimes and so 00:22:48.609 --> 00:22:51.990 forth, but an intercultural history of the Shiite 00:22:51.990 --> 00:22:55.369 practices in India, some of which were in dialogue 00:22:55.369 --> 00:22:59.660 with Hindu practices and so forth. had not been 00:22:59.660 --> 00:23:02.359 done. So that was my dissertation. It turned 00:23:02.359 --> 00:23:05.720 into my first book. And it got me the job at 00:23:05.720 --> 00:23:08.200 Michigan and laid a foundation for my career. 00:23:08.559 --> 00:23:12.059 Wow. Yeah, I mean, your work is like, at least 00:23:12.059 --> 00:23:15.319 in English, is groundbreaking in terms of being 00:23:15.319 --> 00:23:16.960 able to show that. Because I think people in 00:23:16.960 --> 00:23:20.319 South Asia knew that not only were these Shia 00:23:20.319 --> 00:23:23.319 kingdoms important, but they were also, in a 00:23:23.319 --> 00:23:25.740 way, kind of... part of the creators of the high 00:23:25.740 --> 00:23:30.539 culture of Muslim society, right? And the Shias 00:23:30.539 --> 00:23:32.240 especially, like, having an important part to 00:23:32.240 --> 00:23:36.099 play in that. It's very, very interesting. So 00:23:36.099 --> 00:23:42.680 then I'm interested in kind of, like, in terms 00:23:42.680 --> 00:23:48.180 of how you go from your kind of your more teaching 00:23:48.180 --> 00:23:51.809 kind of historical work to... the more public 00:23:51.809 --> 00:23:54.690 -facing work that you kind of shifted to eventually. 00:23:55.329 --> 00:23:58.910 What took you in that direction? Well, because 00:23:58.910 --> 00:24:01.690 I had done this MA in Cairo, and I had lived 00:24:01.690 --> 00:24:04.750 in Cairo in the 70s, and then I did the PhD work 00:24:04.750 --> 00:24:09.910 in India and Pakistan, I lived on the terrain 00:24:09.910 --> 00:24:16.130 on which the components of al -Qaeda grew up. 00:24:16.690 --> 00:24:19.609 So when I was in Egypt, You read the newspapers, 00:24:19.809 --> 00:24:22.490 and 88 members of Islamic Jihad had been arrested 00:24:22.490 --> 00:24:25.450 that day. It was impossible not to be aware of 00:24:25.450 --> 00:24:30.410 it. And being specialized in Islamic movements, 00:24:30.589 --> 00:24:33.549 I wanted to do some reading in it. And then when 00:24:33.549 --> 00:24:39.130 I was in the shower in 1982, the Afghan refugees 00:24:39.130 --> 00:24:42.710 had come, and I didn't know it. I was in the 00:24:42.710 --> 00:24:45.690 same city with bin Laden and Zawahiri and the 00:24:45.690 --> 00:24:50.299 later leaders of al -Qaeda. who were at that 00:24:50.299 --> 00:24:52.920 time running something called the Office of Services 00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:57.140 for the Afghan Jihadin or fighters against the 00:24:57.140 --> 00:25:02.400 Soviet invasion. So I came back to the United 00:25:02.400 --> 00:25:04.559 States. I got this job at Michigan. I was teaching 00:25:04.559 --> 00:25:06.660 my courses on the modern Middle East, or I taught 00:25:06.660 --> 00:25:08.420 some South Asia. I taught the Mughal Empire. 00:25:09.019 --> 00:25:16.230 But when 9 -11 hit, The whole of America was 00:25:16.230 --> 00:25:20.910 seized with curiosity and fear and anxiety about 00:25:20.910 --> 00:25:23.049 what had happened. Who were these people and 00:25:23.049 --> 00:25:26.750 why had they done what they had done? Well, I 00:25:26.750 --> 00:25:29.269 knew exactly who they were. I didn't have to 00:25:29.269 --> 00:25:33.069 look it up. I'd lived with it. And, you know, 00:25:33.089 --> 00:25:36.569 you can follow these movements. At that time, 00:25:36.569 --> 00:25:39.630 they had Internet bulletin boards and so forth. 00:25:39.789 --> 00:25:45.240 So knowing Arabic and Persian and Urdu. And having 00:25:45.240 --> 00:25:49.559 lived out there, I could easily answer people's 00:25:49.559 --> 00:25:54.880 questions about Al -Qaeda and 9 -11. At the time, 00:25:54.940 --> 00:26:03.160 the major vehicle for intellectual exchange of 00:26:03.160 --> 00:26:06.079 a specialized sort was the email round robin. 00:26:06.619 --> 00:26:09.859 So you would just have a CC list of all the people 00:26:09.859 --> 00:26:12.319 who might be interested in this discussion. And 00:26:12.319 --> 00:26:14.119 you would send out a message. Somebody else would 00:26:14.119 --> 00:26:17.900 reply. So you would have these internet discussions 00:26:17.900 --> 00:26:22.259 and dialogues. So I was on such a list. It was 00:26:22.259 --> 00:26:26.019 called Gulf 2000, which had been founded by Gary 00:26:26.019 --> 00:26:32.220 Sick, who had been on the National Security Council 00:26:32.220 --> 00:26:39.039 for the Gulf. And, of course, that was a place 00:26:39.039 --> 00:26:41.019 where a lot of these kinds of questions were 00:26:41.019 --> 00:26:46.980 asked by academics and policymakers. So I could 00:26:46.980 --> 00:26:49.839 answer their questions. And the Internet is really 00:26:49.839 --> 00:26:55.619 useful because it's a very fast medium. It's 00:26:55.619 --> 00:26:58.720 a hot medium. It's useful if you don't have to 00:26:58.720 --> 00:27:01.759 go off for a week to do reading in order to come 00:27:01.759 --> 00:27:03.539 back and answer a question, because people will 00:27:03.539 --> 00:27:05.339 have forgotten the question was ever asked by 00:27:05.339 --> 00:27:08.799 a week later. I could just answer their questions 00:27:08.799 --> 00:27:12.759 immediately. And so my answers about Al -Qaeda 00:27:12.759 --> 00:27:15.779 were very well thought of by my colleagues, and 00:27:15.779 --> 00:27:18.940 they told me so. And although that list was supposed 00:27:18.940 --> 00:27:23.250 to be internal to the group, In fact, I would 00:27:23.250 --> 00:27:27.509 start to get fan mail from Denmark. I liked your 00:27:27.509 --> 00:27:32.190 posting of October 7th and so forth. So then 00:27:32.190 --> 00:27:37.950 people would start writing me for back issues. 00:27:39.769 --> 00:27:44.190 And at the time, we used Microsoft Outlook, most 00:27:44.190 --> 00:27:46.950 of us, for emails. It didn't have a search engine. 00:27:47.920 --> 00:27:50.259 It was a little bit of a hassle to go back and 00:27:50.259 --> 00:27:55.099 find an old email and send it out again. So that 00:27:55.099 --> 00:27:59.579 was 2001, the winter of 2001 was when blogging 00:27:59.579 --> 00:28:02.359 started to become a well -known phenomenon. It 00:28:02.359 --> 00:28:08.480 had existed since 1999, but it was only then 00:28:08.480 --> 00:28:14.740 gaining a reputation. Andrew Sullivan was a prominent 00:28:14.740 --> 00:28:19.099 journalist who had started a blog. And there 00:28:19.099 --> 00:28:22.319 wasn't very much serious content still in the 00:28:22.319 --> 00:28:30.660 web blogs. A lot of cats. And so I thought, well, 00:28:30.700 --> 00:28:34.839 I'll start a blog. And I can just archive my 00:28:34.839 --> 00:28:36.759 email messages there because I consider them 00:28:36.759 --> 00:28:39.799 public. And when somebody comes looking for a 00:28:39.799 --> 00:28:42.940 back issue, I can just give them the URL. It 00:28:42.940 --> 00:28:45.140 would save me a lot of trouble. So that's in 00:28:45.140 --> 00:28:48.960 the spring of 2002. Okay. I started putting things 00:28:48.960 --> 00:28:54.700 up at this web log. And, you know, in the old 00:28:54.700 --> 00:28:59.480 days when the Internet first emerged in the early 00:28:59.480 --> 00:29:03.559 90s, you know, the Internet is different from 00:29:03.559 --> 00:29:06.420 the World Wide Web, I mean, when the World Wide 00:29:06.420 --> 00:29:10.009 Web first emerged. The web is different from 00:29:10.009 --> 00:29:12.769 the Internet. Email can be the Internet, but 00:29:12.769 --> 00:29:16.710 the World Wide Web has pages. Initially, they 00:29:16.710 --> 00:29:21.109 were just index cards. You couldn't scroll, and 00:29:21.109 --> 00:29:23.309 you couldn't really do anything but to write 00:29:23.309 --> 00:29:26.589 on the index card and display it. The only movement 00:29:26.589 --> 00:29:28.710 you could have was a hyperlink, so you could 00:29:28.710 --> 00:29:32.609 link that index card to other index cards. Every 00:29:32.609 --> 00:29:36.670 time you put up an index card, you had to do 00:29:36.670 --> 00:29:39.910 this. called file transfer protocol you had to 00:29:39.910 --> 00:29:43.829 design it and and put it up manually upload it 00:29:43.829 --> 00:29:47.509 manually and then it would be a standalone document 00:29:47.509 --> 00:29:50.109 only linked to other documents by the hyperlink 00:29:50.109 --> 00:29:53.130 so you could go sideways but you couldn't go 00:29:53.130 --> 00:29:59.670 up and down so in 1999 this young software engineers 00:29:59.670 --> 00:30:02.769 invented blogger .com which was had a window 00:30:03.450 --> 00:30:06.470 And you could put text in and press publish and 00:30:06.470 --> 00:30:09.609 it would FTP it for you. You didn't have to do 00:30:09.609 --> 00:30:14.170 it manually. And also, it would push down whatever 00:30:14.170 --> 00:30:16.730 text was there before and put this on top of 00:30:16.730 --> 00:30:20.549 it. So that just became much more convenient. 00:30:21.690 --> 00:30:26.109 And that was the software that we used initially, 00:30:26.190 --> 00:30:30.720 most bloggers, to put up their web pages. But 00:30:30.720 --> 00:30:34.819 then after a while, it would be summer, and we 00:30:34.819 --> 00:30:37.279 professors don't teach in the summer, and I would 00:30:37.279 --> 00:30:39.279 have some time to do research, and I would be 00:30:39.279 --> 00:30:41.980 tooling around the web. And again, I knew Arabic, 00:30:42.059 --> 00:30:44.259 so I could find out things that other people 00:30:44.259 --> 00:30:46.900 couldn't. And if I found an interesting article 00:30:46.900 --> 00:30:49.940 about al -Qaeda and its history, I would translate 00:30:49.940 --> 00:30:52.700 it and put it at the website. So I started making 00:30:52.700 --> 00:30:56.609 original entries. And the website, you know, 00:30:56.690 --> 00:31:00.529 50 people would come a day or 75 or what. Initially, 00:31:00.609 --> 00:31:04.029 it was a small thing. And then Bush decided to 00:31:04.029 --> 00:31:09.769 invade Iraq. And those Shiites that I studied 00:31:09.769 --> 00:31:13.529 in India went on pilgrimage to Iraq. And there 00:31:13.529 --> 00:31:15.650 was a lot of back and forth between Iran, Iraq 00:31:15.650 --> 00:31:17.710 and North India at that time, because India, 00:31:17.789 --> 00:31:20.890 the Indian Shiite kingdom of Awad that I studied 00:31:20.890 --> 00:31:24.579 was rich. And so there was patronage and pilgrimage 00:31:24.579 --> 00:31:28.119 and so forth. So two chapters of my dissertation 00:31:28.119 --> 00:31:30.700 were actually set in Iraq. I knew who the Iraqi 00:31:30.700 --> 00:31:32.539 Shiites were. I knew who the grandparents were. 00:31:32.740 --> 00:31:39.180 And when Bush decided to go to Iraq, I was able 00:31:39.180 --> 00:31:42.900 to talk knowledgeably about Iraqi history and 00:31:42.900 --> 00:31:47.079 society. And then once Saddam fell, the Iraqis 00:31:47.079 --> 00:31:51.039 put up like 200 websites. And some of them were 00:31:51.039 --> 00:31:55.099 city. So you could read local news, what was 00:31:55.099 --> 00:31:56.880 happening in a particular neighborhood. There 00:31:56.880 --> 00:32:00.680 was no censorship. So I could find out almost 00:32:00.680 --> 00:32:05.460 anything. A high -ranking U .S. general once 00:32:05.460 --> 00:32:07.619 wrote me in that period and said, how do you 00:32:07.619 --> 00:32:10.960 know these things? So apparently I was doing 00:32:10.960 --> 00:32:17.569 a better job than this and tell people. And I 00:32:17.569 --> 00:32:20.470 blogged Iraq. And once Bush decided to go to 00:32:20.470 --> 00:32:22.990 war there and send U .S. troops there, you figure 00:32:22.990 --> 00:32:28.109 he sent 100 ,000, 120 ,000 troops. Each of those 00:32:28.109 --> 00:32:31.309 has family. They have friends. That's a big constituents 00:32:31.309 --> 00:32:32.890 of people who really want to know what's going 00:32:32.890 --> 00:32:35.589 on over there because they're interested in the 00:32:35.589 --> 00:32:38.710 fate of their loved one. In addition to which, 00:32:38.710 --> 00:32:41.690 it was a national project. Bush promised the 00:32:41.690 --> 00:32:43.869 Americans he was going to turn Iraq into a beacon 00:32:43.869 --> 00:32:46.730 on the hill. They became emotionally invested 00:32:46.730 --> 00:32:49.710 in Iraq. It's so funny now if you think about 00:32:49.710 --> 00:32:52.450 it. We just had elections in Iraq last October, 00:32:52.529 --> 00:32:55.410 and I don't think the American public even knew 00:32:55.410 --> 00:32:58.809 that it happened. But in the early zeros, that's 00:32:58.809 --> 00:33:01.470 the kind of thing they were focused like a laser 00:33:01.470 --> 00:33:06.710 on. So at the time, the blog technology was such 00:33:06.710 --> 00:33:11.420 that you would have... a side panel in which 00:33:11.420 --> 00:33:14.460 it was called a blog roll, in which you would 00:33:14.460 --> 00:33:18.299 recommend other sites to your readers. And so 00:33:18.299 --> 00:33:24.200 people who had a weblog that was in any way related 00:33:24.200 --> 00:33:27.980 to foreign affairs would suddenly put my weblog 00:33:27.980 --> 00:33:31.259 in their list as a hyperlink. And so when people 00:33:31.259 --> 00:33:33.380 finished reading an article on that site, they 00:33:33.380 --> 00:33:36.400 would go to the blog roll and click and come 00:33:36.400 --> 00:33:41.650 to me. And then there were some mega bloggers, 00:33:41.670 --> 00:33:44.950 people who had a big following who linked to 00:33:44.950 --> 00:33:49.869 me. I woke up one morning and I had 60 ,000 hits. 00:33:50.230 --> 00:33:57.599 And, you know, in April of 2004. at the height 00:33:57.599 --> 00:34:00.039 of the struggles between the Marines and the 00:34:00.039 --> 00:34:02.539 Mahdi Army, I had a million hits that month. 00:34:02.759 --> 00:34:06.259 I'd never had a million of anything. And then 00:34:06.259 --> 00:34:10.599 they called me on public television, the NewsHour, 00:34:10.659 --> 00:34:15.360 and even on cable news more generally, CNN. I 00:34:15.360 --> 00:34:19.460 even once went on Fox. And people were interested 00:34:19.460 --> 00:34:21.719 in what I knew, the Senate Select Foreign Relations 00:34:21.719 --> 00:34:23.780 Committee, then headed by Joe Biden and Dick 00:34:23.780 --> 00:34:27.119 Lugar. called me to testify because they couldn't 00:34:27.119 --> 00:34:28.780 get the Bush administration to tell them what 00:34:28.780 --> 00:34:32.780 the world was going on over there. So I gained 00:34:32.780 --> 00:34:37.280 a certain odd sort of celebrity. I actually was 00:34:37.280 --> 00:34:40.460 recognized in restaurants in D .C. That's interesting. 00:34:41.000 --> 00:34:43.400 I can remember I was in Minnesota giving a talk, 00:34:43.480 --> 00:34:46.320 and I paid the taxi by credit card, and the young 00:34:46.320 --> 00:34:47.800 man looked at it, and he said, oh, are you the 00:34:47.800 --> 00:34:53.420 Juan Cole? So it wasn't... It wasn't the frivolous 00:34:53.420 --> 00:34:55.460 kind of Hollywood celebrity. I didn't have the 00:34:55.460 --> 00:34:57.440 pink limousine or anything like that. But I was 00:34:57.440 --> 00:35:02.199 very well known. C .P. Snow said that the celebrity 00:35:02.199 --> 00:35:03.960 is someone who's very well known for being very 00:35:03.960 --> 00:35:07.380 well known. In a very minor way. I don't want 00:35:07.380 --> 00:35:09.599 to make too much of it. I entered those ranks. 00:35:10.219 --> 00:35:13.440 But it was because the country wanted the knowledge 00:35:13.440 --> 00:35:15.960 that I had. They wanted the analysis that I had. 00:35:16.840 --> 00:35:21.579 And I consulted with the government. You know, 00:35:21.619 --> 00:35:23.599 I've been against the Vietnam War and marched 00:35:23.599 --> 00:35:28.400 against it. But with Al Qaeda in Iraq, I thought 00:35:28.400 --> 00:35:33.039 the Iraq war was a bad idea. But I also wanted 00:35:33.039 --> 00:35:37.440 a soft landing for everybody. And then I really, 00:35:37.460 --> 00:35:40.639 really wanted to help do whatever I could to 00:35:40.639 --> 00:35:43.659 destroy Al Qaeda. So the government called me 00:35:43.659 --> 00:35:45.820 to consult. I came and told them what I knew. 00:35:45.860 --> 00:35:47.800 I thought, well, I'm a public intellectual. I'm 00:35:47.800 --> 00:35:50.559 the people of Michigan for... whatever reason 00:35:50.559 --> 00:35:53.400 to pay me to tell the public these things. The 00:35:53.400 --> 00:35:58.219 government is part of that public. So I was willing 00:35:58.219 --> 00:36:05.139 to talk to other experts in D .C. and share that 00:36:05.139 --> 00:36:09.420 knowledge. I kept expecting this to be a one 00:36:09.420 --> 00:36:12.360 -year adventure and to be over, but it lasted 00:36:12.360 --> 00:36:15.980 really until COVID. The people were interested 00:36:15.980 --> 00:36:22.039 in Iraq, and then ISIL arose. So there was 20 00:36:22.039 --> 00:36:25.280 years there where a big chunk of my career was 00:36:25.280 --> 00:36:30.760 telling people about Islam in the Middle East. 00:36:30.940 --> 00:36:34.909 And then I found that... It was so much Islamophobia 00:36:34.909 --> 00:36:40.329 in my comments. As hard as I tried to inform 00:36:40.329 --> 00:36:44.130 people, I couldn't always get through. And then 00:36:44.130 --> 00:36:48.050 it occurred to me that maybe trying to explain 00:36:48.050 --> 00:36:52.030 radical groups like Al -Qaeda and ISIL to people 00:36:52.030 --> 00:36:54.869 is not the best way to inform them about Islam 00:36:54.869 --> 00:36:57.190 more generally. Because the Americans didn't 00:36:57.190 --> 00:36:59.190 realize it, but those are very tiny little sects. 00:36:59.190 --> 00:37:02.010 I mean, almost nobody... paid attention to them 00:37:02.010 --> 00:37:04.869 in their home countries, except to the extent 00:37:04.869 --> 00:37:09.190 that they're violent. And so I had been trained 00:37:09.190 --> 00:37:12.170 at the American University in Cairo and UCLA 00:37:12.170 --> 00:37:15.230 in early Islamics as well. So I decided to write 00:37:15.230 --> 00:37:18.670 a book about the idea of peace in the Quran. 00:37:19.849 --> 00:37:22.750 As far as I could tell, there had not been such 00:37:22.750 --> 00:37:28.300 a book. But I find concepts of reconciliation, 00:37:28.619 --> 00:37:34.960 peace, moderation, and dialogue are throughout 00:37:34.960 --> 00:37:38.360 the Quran. Of course, Muslims know this. The 00:37:38.360 --> 00:37:40.219 Western public, including the Western academic 00:37:40.219 --> 00:37:43.219 public, I think mostly didn't know it. And so 00:37:43.219 --> 00:37:46.519 that became my project from the middle of the 00:37:46.519 --> 00:37:51.340 last decade was I wrote a book about Muhammad 00:37:51.340 --> 00:37:56.300 and peace. I wrote a book about, I edited a book 00:37:56.300 --> 00:37:58.199 about peace movements in Islam in which we looked 00:37:58.199 --> 00:37:59.940 at all range of them. There's a lot of peace 00:37:59.940 --> 00:38:03.219 movements in Muslim societies, but people don't 00:38:03.219 --> 00:38:05.179 think about them that way. They know about them. 00:38:05.280 --> 00:38:07.920 You know, they had that horrible. genocide in 00:38:07.920 --> 00:38:10.480 Bosnia, but after it was over and you had the 00:38:10.480 --> 00:38:14.460 Dayton Accords, there were Muslim women who formed 00:38:14.460 --> 00:38:18.420 organizations to work for conciliation with their 00:38:18.420 --> 00:38:21.179 Serbian neighbors and so forth. And there is 00:38:21.179 --> 00:38:23.599 a literature on this, but it's just, it's not 00:38:23.599 --> 00:38:28.739 in people's consciousness. Yeah. We're ending, 00:38:28.940 --> 00:38:32.760 we're nearing our time to end, but I am interested 00:38:32.760 --> 00:38:39.150 in kind of what is your I mean, you've had such 00:38:39.150 --> 00:38:41.989 a varied career in terms of the work that you've 00:38:41.989 --> 00:38:48.170 done. I mean, what are kind of the main takeaways 00:38:48.170 --> 00:38:50.949 that you would want, say, students who are interested 00:38:50.949 --> 00:38:54.750 in kind of learning more about either interfaith 00:38:54.750 --> 00:38:57.329 dialogue or kind of the Middle East more generally 00:38:57.329 --> 00:39:01.530 to, what are some of the key learnings that you 00:39:01.530 --> 00:39:04.610 think that... people just should know about the 00:39:04.610 --> 00:39:07.250 world, especially as we see it kind of things 00:39:07.250 --> 00:39:11.309 unfolding today. With regard to the first part 00:39:11.309 --> 00:39:15.869 of your question about studying Islam, its history, 00:39:15.969 --> 00:39:19.409 its thought, you know, the Victorians in the 00:39:19.409 --> 00:39:22.989 19th century developed this notion of what they 00:39:22.989 --> 00:39:26.130 called the enlargement of the self. It was very 00:39:26.130 --> 00:39:28.469 common for people to go on vacation to Italy, 00:39:28.590 --> 00:39:32.909 for instance. And we now... do this routinely, 00:39:32.989 --> 00:39:36.650 but in the mid -19th century that was a boat 00:39:36.650 --> 00:39:39.809 ride and a pretty big deal. Mostly rich people 00:39:39.809 --> 00:39:42.769 did it. But also, we don't think about this, 00:39:42.829 --> 00:39:45.449 but they were pretty hardline Protestants and 00:39:45.449 --> 00:39:47.809 they were going into a Catholic environment and 00:39:47.809 --> 00:39:51.110 the churches were gaudy from their point of view 00:39:51.110 --> 00:39:53.130 and so forth. But then they would be exposed 00:39:53.130 --> 00:39:56.730 to this wonderful Renaissance art. And George 00:39:56.730 --> 00:40:01.010 Eliot, the novelist, who was a woman that she 00:40:01.010 --> 00:40:05.010 wrote under a man's name, she talked about her 00:40:05.010 --> 00:40:07.969 trip to Italy and the way in which it was an 00:40:07.969 --> 00:40:11.369 enlargement of herself, of ordinary life, she 00:40:11.369 --> 00:40:14.469 called it. And so this was the whole concept 00:40:14.469 --> 00:40:18.030 in that period. And of course, it was a time 00:40:18.030 --> 00:40:20.829 when the Victorian world was... sticking its 00:40:20.829 --> 00:40:23.969 fingers all over the world, but also the intellectuals 00:40:23.969 --> 00:40:27.650 and the cultural figures found beauty in these 00:40:27.650 --> 00:40:30.670 other cultures in a way that maybe the administrators 00:40:30.670 --> 00:40:33.849 did not. The district commissioner of such and 00:40:33.849 --> 00:40:36.389 such place in India may not have fully appreciated 00:40:36.389 --> 00:40:38.570 the richness of the culture of the people that 00:40:38.570 --> 00:40:43.309 he was ruling over. So that enlargement of the 00:40:43.309 --> 00:40:49.269 self, of the ways in which you can become that 00:40:49.269 --> 00:40:52.630 you can widen your horizons and deepen your understanding. 00:40:53.949 --> 00:40:57.769 That's something that's worth gold. And learning 00:40:57.769 --> 00:41:00.369 another language, another way of expressing yourself, 00:41:00.550 --> 00:41:03.809 understanding the concepts, because the world 00:41:03.809 --> 00:41:05.250 looks different when you know another language. 00:41:05.530 --> 00:41:11.690 There's even an Arabic proverb, every language 00:41:11.690 --> 00:41:14.829 is a person. It's like when you learn a new language, 00:41:14.849 --> 00:41:16.829 it's like you have a new personality incorporated 00:41:16.829 --> 00:41:21.510 into yourself. And although, as you say, there 00:41:21.510 --> 00:41:25.409 may be a lot more public interest in the history 00:41:25.409 --> 00:41:29.309 of Zen Buddhism or something like that, those 00:41:29.309 --> 00:41:32.789 Sufis in Islam are really interesting people 00:41:32.789 --> 00:41:37.639 and they have fascinating stories to tell. We 00:41:37.639 --> 00:41:40.099 think about religion as sermons and homilies, 00:41:40.159 --> 00:41:43.579 but they like to tell tales, folk tales kind 00:41:43.579 --> 00:41:47.440 of thing, but with a spiritual import. And they 00:41:47.440 --> 00:41:49.400 have very large books full of these stories, 00:41:49.460 --> 00:41:54.059 and they're more spiritual kinds of stories. 00:41:54.079 --> 00:41:55.639 They're not like the Thousand and One Nights, 00:41:55.639 --> 00:41:58.550 which are also very interesting. But anyway, 00:41:58.809 --> 00:42:02.590 I think that study of that kind of literature 00:42:02.590 --> 00:42:05.269 is very rewarding in its own right, and it gives 00:42:05.269 --> 00:42:08.809 you spiritual insights that are useful in facing 00:42:08.809 --> 00:42:11.949 life. With regard to geopolitics, I mean, I don't 00:42:11.949 --> 00:42:14.730 think I have to really make a strong pitch for 00:42:14.730 --> 00:42:18.110 that. We don't understand the Middle East, but 00:42:18.110 --> 00:42:22.010 we rampage around it like an elephant in a china 00:42:22.010 --> 00:42:29.019 shop. I have been both pleasantly surprised and 00:42:29.019 --> 00:42:33.079 deeply disappointed by my interactions with officials 00:42:33.079 --> 00:42:34.880 in Washington because some of them were really 00:42:34.880 --> 00:42:36.800 on the ball and knew their stuff, but a very 00:42:36.800 --> 00:42:38.860 large number of them were completely ignorant 00:42:38.860 --> 00:42:43.099 of the places that they were trying to run. And 00:42:43.099 --> 00:42:47.780 I think that's unadvisable. I think the U .S. 00:42:47.800 --> 00:42:49.619 public is going to go on having things to do 00:42:49.619 --> 00:42:53.739 with the Middle East. the public needs to get 00:42:53.739 --> 00:42:56.760 up to speed and do the reading and investigate. 00:42:58.099 --> 00:43:00.219 Well, thank you so much, Professor Paul. It's 00:43:00.219 --> 00:43:02.880 been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you.