Ambassador Thomas Pickering at "Islamophobia" Panel (October 23, 2012)

7/31/2019 Ambassador Thomas Pickering at "Islamophobia" Panel (October 23, 2012)

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PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT

Islamophobia panel discussion, National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., evening of Octo-

ber 23, 2012

Transcribed by Matthew Vadum (matthewvadum.com)

The event was officially described at http://www.nationalcathedral.org/events/Mus-

limPanel20121023.shtml#.UJPQi2_A99s:

OCTOBER 23, 2012 7:30 PM

Panel Discussion: The Muslim Experience in America

As the eyes of the world turn to anti-American sentiment in the Middle East, the experi-

ence of Muslims in America has only grown more complex. This special public panel

which culminated an intensive, high-level summitaddressed the challenges that Mus-

lims in the United States continue to face, including suspicion and discrimination, and

what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia. This discussion comes

at a pivotal moment in international relations between Americans and nations where the

majority population is Muslim.

The panel was moderated by the Very Rev. Gary Hall, dean of the Cathedral.

Participants included:

Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of

State

Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Association for Muslim Advancement

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative

Dr. James J. Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress with support from

the Carnegie Corporation of New York. [boldface added]

[introductions etc. not transcribed]
http://www.nationalcathedral.org/events/MuslimPanel20121023.shtml#.UJPQi2_A99shttp://www.nationalcathedral.org/events/MuslimPanel20121023.shtml#.UJPQi2_A99shttp://www.nationalcathedral.org/events/MuslimPanel20121023.shtml#.UJPQi2_A99shttp://www.nationalcathedral.org/events/MuslimPanel20121023.shtml#.UJPQi2_A99s


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14:30

DAISY KHAN: I'm telling you all this because not everything is bleak. It may appear that

we're going through difficult times but there's some belief orientation going on within our

community. There are new institutions that are being built. We are creating leaders whowill become the future Muslim leaders of the world. We are [unintelligible] in their own

countries so they can stand up for their own rights. And the greatest thing is a lot of

these linkages are here coming out in the United States where Muslims are free to do

anything. And we are standing on the legacy, the grand legacy of American women's

suffragette movement and the civil rights movement. I've learned a tremendous amount

from these movements and I think this is a great calling for Muslims because whatever

Christian women have done and Jewish women have done, that too is [unintelligible].

And in conclusion, I know I have short of time remaining to talk but a couple of years

ago you must have heard about the community center downtown that caused an inter-

national furor. I'm sure [unintelligible] the conversation, but very briefly once again when

we proposed this project it was meant to bring people of all religions together. It was

meant to be a center of healing, a center of understanding. It was in our neighborhood,

it was our effort to say here we are the moderates that you keep asking for. We're here.

We're here to build our neighborhood, the neighborhood that was our city, our neighbor-

hood, our country, we want to rebuild it. And what was white became black, what was

black became white and what was reported to all of you was [unintelligible]. So this is

the power of media and how perceptions get shaped. We have a lot of work to do andaudiences like you are very important because you all have constituencies and it's im-

portant for us to [unintelligible] and really go out there and share the good news with the

world. Thank you so much.

[...]

24:30

JAMES ZOGBY: We have a new wave of nativisms coming along. They're challenging

that. It began over Imam Feisal's project. It took a different direction when we went to

loyalty oaths for Muslims and Michele Bachmann wanting people fired because they

weren't loyal to America, that kind of a McCarthyist bent to our politics there. What I find

dangerous about it is that we've been down this road before but it's not who we are ulti-

mately, that's not the America that triumphs, but we can't afford to make another mis-


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take. That kid, that 10, 11 year old boy who wants to see the stars and go to the movies,

what's at stake is, does he find that America, does he find that American identity [unin-

telligible] and the challenge with us is not to change who we are but to be who we are,

to be the best of what we are and to not allow the marginalization of Muslim youth, but

to fight rather to marginalize instead, those who preach hatred and exclusion becausewhat's at stake is not just the inclusion of the young and the sense that the American

dream and the American identity will work for the next generation, what's at stake funda-

mentally is the America that we know and love and that we want to pass on to the next

generation. The lady in the harbor still stands there and the promise that she holds is

one ultimately that we have to [unintelligible]. That identity is what makes us strong. It's

what inoculates our young from radicalization. It's what keeps our young from becoming,

feeling marginalized.

[...]

27:44

JAMES ZOGBY: The danger about what Newt Gingrich is doing, what Michele Bach-

mann is doing, they're making us into Britain, they're making us into France and Ger-

many, they're making us into a place that is no different, that does not include, and so I

can see this as a theological issue as much as I see it as a national issue of America

being what it is and what it does best, a model to the world, an example for our ownpeople, a place that has brought in countless waves of immigrants [unintelligible], trans-

forms them, transforms itself and becomes one of the great countries in the history of

the world. Thank you.

[...]

37:00

FEISAL ABDUL RAUF: So we have a country that is shifting, as all countries do, but the

genius of the American societal contact is that we are a nation based up on principles

and these principles govern our identity and they govern our identity far more profoundly

because while we shift demographically, while we shift in terms of our ethnic composi-

tion, our religious demographics, we do have certain principles which unite us as a peo-

ple and as a nation, a nation under God, indivisible with liberty for all, a nation that is


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built upon a fundamental recognition of certain inalienable truths that we subscribe to,

that all human beings are created equal and that the God that created us gave us in-

alienable rights, that they adhere in us not because these rights are given to us by any

manmade agency. They adhere in us because we're human, that's why they're inalien-

able, among which are life, life, and the pursuit of happiness, which was [unintelligible]property which was then [unintelligible] happiness. And five centuries before these

words were written, Muslim jurists, Muslim scholars of law, they said all the Sharia, all

the law has one meta objective which is the best interests of human beings in this life or

the next because [unintelligible]. We believe [unintelligible] the law and judgment and

that this meta objective can be divided into six fundamental objectives of the law: the

protection and furtherance of life, of religion, of dignity, of property, of family, of the intel-

lect, of the mind...

43:10 [brief introduction of Ambassador Pickering by moderator not transcribed]

THOMAS PICKERING: Thank you, Dean Halden. Good evening to all of you. I must in-

dulge a little bit in a shorter life history to tell you that I've had the honor and pleasure of

serving the United States government for forty-five years and during the course of that

time was asked to be ambassador seven times. I had the wonderful experience of un-

derstanding something about religious diversity when I tell you I was ambassador to the

largest Orthodox country, Russia, for the largest Hindu country, India, to the only Jewish

country, Israel, to a Roman Catholic country, El Salvador, and to the Muslim country ofJordan.

Diversity and religious experience was for me a part and parcel of knowing and under-

standing the job I was doing for you and for the American government. And it played an

inordinately interesting role in many cases. To understand something about the common

beliefs, the cultural differences, and the important things that united us as we looked out

together at the world and its changes. I've spent a lot of my time since I left the govern-

ment thinking about Iran and the challenges of Iran. And one of the striking and interest-

ing things is that the depth of mistrust and misunderstanding has become so great that

my own belief is that it will take more than just a political breakthrough. It will take the

beginning of a dialogue with the Iranians which most unusually for the United States will

have to be informed by an effort to develop religious understanding and perhaps harmo-

ny. And to that extent, religious leaders in the United States in a way may be called upon

to become part and parcel of the effort which will take time to build and strengthen our


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common interests through a common sharing of a set of ideas and values which is, in

my view, very much a part and parcel of Islam as well as Christianity and Judaism.

And you've heard from speakers tonight about that subject. The dean has given me a

long charge to speak extensively about a wide number of topics and I'm going to cut thatshort. There should be time here for questions, but perhaps I could take it on myself to

do something that I used to get paid for, to give you a very brief, very short summary of

our six hours of intensive conversation this afternoon about the subject at hand. About

our brothers and sisters in Islam in this country. About the gulf that has opened up and

may still be opening. And what we might be able to do to close that gulf as we have

struggled over the years to do so, with many who have come to this country from differ-

ent countries, from different backgrounds, and from different religions.

We began by an understanding that this country conceived in large measure by the wis-

dom of people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, opened a special door, a

unique door to religious tolerance, religious acceptance and, indeed, to mutual love in

the field of and in the concept of religious diversity. But broadly speaking, a sense that

we were all brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the single creating God. We un-

derstood that the struggle to implement those concepts, those wonderful ideas, is a

long, hard and continuing one. It's a struggle that has been characterized as one person

put it so clearly, by phobias, by bigotry, and by discrimination. And the inter-relationship

of those emotions and those feelings is something that we all believed we had to under-take a special effort to deal with. There was no question at all as an interfaith dialogue

we understood that on so many occasions, what happened to one of us would eventual-

ly happen to all of us. I'm not great at quotations. Perhaps it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer

who said of the Nazis, when they came for the Jews, I didn't speak up. I was not a Jew.

When they came for the Catholics, I didn't speak up, I was not a Catholic. When they

came for us, no one spoke up. There was no one left to do so.

[Transcribers note: This is a misattribution. In fact it was not Bonhoeffer. It was Martin

Niemoller and he gave the When they came for the... sermon that Pickering para-

phrases here in 1946.]

But in many ways we have this common bond of feeling that if religious discrimination

and religious separation becomes the object of attack, we ourselves have a responsibili-

ty to deal with that. We discussed strategies and ideas for proceeding. We discussed


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enough of cultural differences in giving them the advantage of understanding how and in

what way they might best deal with the people they ran across. And I think that that was

part and parcel of the haste with which we went in, the feeling that in war more things

are excusable than in any other circumstance. And that is difficult. But I have not seen a

veterans' movement yet that in fact has willingly become part of what I see as thestrong, continuing and perhaps in an unfortunate way in some areas, growing prejudice

against Muslims and Islam. And I hope it doesn't eventually. Many of the soldiers are

still serving and I think that also is helpful because they understand that as loyal Ameri-

cans, that kind of prejudice is not to be expressed. We've had a number of unfortunate

incidents in our actions overseas. I only have to mention Abu Ghraib for you to under-

stand. And I think they have left an extremely bad feeling among Muslims around the

world. As indeed I believe the misbegotten war in Iraq and the invasion of Iraq has left

its own sense of deep feelings. Some of that may well be now requited, but not entirely.

And I fear that that's the bigger influence rather than the veterans as individuals acting

in this country.

1:10:45

[...]

JAMES ZOGBY: What can one expect from a 21 year old who's in the military and who's

in a country where people are trying to kill him and the use of terms like haji or, we do itin every war. We have to dehumanize the enemy in order to legitimate the killing and

that happened and I would add that the training that was done, we now have some reve-

lations. I've got a stack on my desk about this high of the training manuals that were

used at the Pentagon, and at other places at the Defense Department or that were used

by law enforcement. The FBI training program is shameful, it's shameful. And I have,

while they say they've gotten rid of them, I don't know what they replaced them with, and

I do not believe that it is an issue of national security or top secret clearance to know

what the hell's in a training program teaching kids about in the military or teaching FBI

agents about Arabs and Muslims.

I mean it ought to be something that we're brought into to do the training because what's

at stake is the relationships that get built on the ground, the understanding that the kids

come back with, the understanding of the FBI agents on the street who are dealing with

these things and when you look at the training materials they've gone through, when


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you look at the fact that up until, 2009, at Fort Bragg we were still using Raphael Pitai's

The Arab Mind, a 1957 book that is about as racist as anything I've ever seen on Arab

thought, on Arab culture, and it was reissued with an introduction by a colonel, this is

the best way to understand Arabs and it's and Seymour Hersh makes the argument

quite convincingly that there's a direct line between the logic of The Arab Mindand whathappened in Abu Ghraib, the Arabs understand one thing and that's shame and humilia-

tion.

And of course the worst kind of humiliation is sexual degradation so we want to get them

to bow down and say Simon and degrade them sexually, and that's the logic we're us-

ing. It's a problem and we're accountable and I think that we need to take a long hard

look at why both the Pentagon and law enforcement have not been more forthcoming in

revealing the materials and in opening up the process so that real experts can come in

and do the training because ultimately what's at stake are relationships that get built, the

psychology of these kids, and the relationships ultimately that will survive beyond their

military and their law enforcement experiences.

[...]

JAMES ZOGBY: I'm going to say something that people may not understand or accept

in the beginning but just hear me out. I actually think there's a direct correlation between

the president of the United States and Islamophobia and here's why. I think that there'sa direct correlation between the president of the United States and Islamophobia. As we

do our polling, we find that it is not the universal phenomenon. This hatred toward Mus-

lims is largely concentrated with middle class, middle age, white people, and then it

overlaps almost identically with the Tea Party. It is not a Republican thing. It's a genera-

tional thing.

And it is a phenomenon born of a simple set of conditions, collapse of home mortgages,

foreclosures increasing, pensions in collapse when the stock market went down, unem-

ployment doubling, the decline of the American dream. In our polling we always used,

when we'd say, are your children going to be better off than you, that's the American

dream question, we'd get two thirds saying yes. We now get two thirds saying no.

And in the midst of all of that this group of white middle aged, middle class men looked

around and saw a young African-American, educated at Harvard with a middle name


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Hussein, and didn't like the president of the United States of America. It fueled this phe-

nomenon and it opened the door for the wedge issue to operate and it's operating sim-

ply among that demographic, it's not a universal phenomenon, it's not found among

African-Americans or Asians or Latinos, it's not found among young white kids, it's not

found among college educated professional women, it's found in that one narrow demo-graphic, that's where the bad numbers come from.

And I think that, if, we had, I have a lot of gripes with George Bush, but if he were

president, he would be doing what he did, which is put his foot down and say stop. I

think we would not be seeing the phenomenon growing as we see it growing. But the

problem is is that if Barack Obama says stop they say, you're just the damn problem to

begin with, you're not one of us anyway. [Transcribers note: Zogby uses a

redneck/country accent when saying the italicized words.]

When a third of them don't think he's born here and another third think he's a Muslim,

just a secret Muslim, and don't think he ought to be president because he's not legiti-

mately an American citizen, this is a huge problem, so there's an overlay between the

racism and the Islamophobia and I think that we have to understand it and address it

and realize that there is a [unintelligible] to the electorate and it's being used as a wedge

issue.

MODERATOR: Other thoughts on that?

THOMAS PICKERING: Let me just go further. Jim, I agree with what you say about both

domestic politics and the wedge issue and the effect on the attitude towards the presi-

dent. I'm deeply concerned. I don't agree with you that the veterans are a problem. I

agree with you we had a huge problem with the armed forces, and you're right, it is the

enemy. But I don't believe yet we have seen them bring that problem in an organized

way back to the United States. But I will tell you that I think the fact that we have fought

two long, difficult, and fruitless, in my view, wars against countries which are Islamic and

in which that particular set of issues contribute to stereotyping, to phobia, to basically

loose talk, jokes, and all the things that go to tend to make up bigotry and in a sense au-

thorized it because we were at war is, in my view, part and parcel of the phenomenon

that we see now and much more significant I think than what individual troops may have

brought back. I'm not saying there's none of it, but I don't see a wave of it or a responsi-

ble group pushing this in any serious sense.


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[...]

1:22:20

IMAM RAUF: We need what are called interlocutors. Interlocutors are individuals who

both are recognized by the communities belonging to them and also by the broader

community as belonging to them. They have to be seen as insiders on both sides and

therefore what we need effectively is more effective interlocutors. [Unintelligible] really

drop dead gorgeous good looking young men and young women to be on television. I

mean, when you have people for example, publicity bombing, and you get the person

with a thick foreign Arab accent or a Pakistani accent and people will look and say who's

that? I can't relate to that person. But when you have a person who may look Pakistani

and I've seen this when you stick them with a Mobile, Alabama, accent [audience

laughs] or a Bronx accent, an Iraqi girl looking Iraqi thick with a Bronx accent, they'll say,

oh, I relate to that person.

So this is, I think, this is what we need to do. This is why I believe that this is a genera-

tional thing as more and more people obviously who understand what it means to be

American, who speak in terms of American dialectic, the American vocabulary, the so-

cial vocabulary, the political vocabulary that makes people, oh yeah, I get it, and also to

express those values in the authenticity of the terminology and the language and theideals and the existential viewpoint of the Muslim community, that's what will see the

shift. So part of the generic teaching aspects is to enhance [unintelligible] those inter-

locutors. We have people like [unintellgible], Jim here is one of them, I'm one of them,

he's not a Muslim, he's a Christian, an Arab Christian, and I was once on a panel with

an Arab Christian from Jordan who said I'm interested but my culture is Muslim which to

me was, wow!, that was peculiar, but Jim is symbolic [unintelligible] very effective [unin-

telligible]. The problem is that we are completely overbooked. [audience laughs] We are

spread too thin and we need to be more [unintelligible].

1:25:00

JAMES ZOGBY: This year I was at the Democratic convention. We had a record number

of Arab American delegates. We had a record number of Muslim American delegates.

We had people like Congressman Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, I don't know, I mean


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God in His wisdom could not have done better than Keith Ellison. [crosstalk, audience

laughs] Keith Ellison is a gift to America and Congress, an extraordinary person who

could not be better than he is and there are mayors all over the country, that there are

city council people all over the country growing in power in the communities, is a marvel

to behold. It is happening. And I think it's happening as part of the generation model[unintelligible], I mean, it's, you're just here for so long that at some point the tensions in

Kashmir affect your family or the bombs in Lebanon will hurt your uncle and aunt but the

schools ultimately are the ones that your kids are going to and whether there's crime in

the streets and drugs, they're going to affect your safety and your business so folks de-

cide to get involved organically as they become more integrated into the society and the

fact is is that every skill, you know, when I started 30 years ago, open an office for

Yemeni farm workers in California, there were three offices we opened for 7,000 Yemeni

farm workers, second largest group of farm workers, they'd been there for 10 years with

no services. Chavez wasn't organizing them and they had no services from the state.

Ten years later there were 400 Yemeni farm workers left in the fields. They had opened

over 3,000 small businesses up and down the coast of California. Today there is the

Young Yemeni Professional Association. It's the doctors, lawyers, engineers, who are

sons of that generation, who are farm workers, opened small businesses, sent their kids

to college and now they're professionals, that's the American story, and they're running

for office and they're getting elected and winning, so.

[...]

1:27:15

DAISY KHAN: I know of four very young Muslim women that are currently serving in

some capacity in various administrations. One is Huma Abedin. Many of you know who

she is, Secretary Clinton's right hand, and Farah Pandith who is also an envoy to Mus-

lim communities around the world but these are very prominent [unintelligible] right here

in DC. And I'd like to tell the story of two unknown women that many of you do not

seemingly know about who actually practically run New York City. They are the two

commissioners of New York City. One happens to be Palestinian-Brazilian, and the oth-

er one happens to be Iranian, so when Mayor Bloomberg leaves town he often in a hu-

morous way says, I wonder how many New Yorkers think that New York is weak left to

an Iranian and a Palestinian? [audience laughs] And how did this happen? I mean these

are both women who have been deeply committed to public service and they didn't even


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think of not pursuing their career or advancing their political aspirations. And the story of

one particular woman who I know is going to go to places is a young girl named Fatima

Shama, she is one of the commissioners, of immigrant affairs of New York City, and

when she was being considered for this role the mayor was trying to woo her, and he

checked her out and said great credentials and they were walking on the street togetherand there was a piece of garbage on the street, she just went and she picked it up, and

he said why'd you do that, because why do you want to dirty your hands, and she said

I'm a public servant, you don't expect me to clean the streets here? And he that's going

to be my commissioner, this is the type of person I want here, so yes, Muslims are

deeply engaging but it's very distressful when people like Huma Abedin get attacked

publicly as she was very recently and we know that it's organized opposition that is try-

ing to scare this community or scare new aspirants from joining [unintelligible] but I think

it's making the Muslim community even stronger and more committed to really joining

ranks. Thank you.

[closing comments, prayer, and wrap-up not transcribed]

-end of partial transcript-

Ambassador Thomas Pickering at "Islamophobia" Panel (October 23, 2012)

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Transcript of Ambassador Thomas Pickering at "Islamophobia" Panel (October 23, 2012)