Dialogue International

By Rob Zaleski, The Capital Times

Mustafa Gokcek isn’t about to deny the obvious.

Thanks mostly to the policies of the Bush administration, the great rift between the Muslim and Western worlds clearly has widened in the last year, acknowledges the 29-year-old Turkish native and UW-Madison grad student.

And there’s no better proof, he says, than the tens of thousands of angry protesters who greeted the president on his recent trip to India and Pakistan. But as worrisome as that may be, Gokcek says it also proves the increasing need for events like the second annual International Conference on Islam, “Dialogue vs. Conflict: Islam in the Age of Globalization,” which will take place March 24-25 at the University of Wisconsin’s Pyle Center.

The event, which Gokcek helped organize and is being funded largely by the UW’s Global Studies program, will feature some of the top Islamic scholars in the world. And since it comes at such a critical time, Gokcek’s hoping the local media don’t choose to ignore it, as they did last year.

Not that it was entirely the media’s fault, Gokcek says with a grin.

As noted here last spring, Gokcek and other members of Dialogue International — a campus group formed in the wake of 9/11 — got so caught up in the pre-event planning that they made an embarrassing blunder: they scheduled it for the last weekend in April, traditionally the most frenzied weekend of the year in Madison.

It meant the conference not only had to compete with the Crazylegs Classic, but the Farmers’ Market, the Mifflin Street block party and a sold-out Saturday night performance of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. It also happened to be the weekend that Hillary Clinton spoke to a packed house at the Wisconsin Women in Government banquet at Monona Terrace.

So nobody was really surprised, Gokcek says, that the conference attracted only about 100 people.

“This year will be better,” he cautiously predicted during an interview last week at a State Street coffee shop.

Indeed, while the primary goal of the conference is to promote the need for dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims and to discuss Islamic-related issues in a “more scholarly, non-speculative way,” a secondary goal is to boost attendance by making the discussions accessible to the Madison community as a whole, Gokcek says. To that end, there will be question-and-answer sessions at the end of each presentation.

(The conference is free for UW students, $30 for non-students. For more information, see www.islam-conf.org.)

While the participants will debate a wide range of issues, Gokcek points out that several speakers — notably Thomas Michel, former director of the Islamic office of the Vatican Council for Interreligious Dialogue — will address the controversy over Danish cartoons that poked fun at the Muslim Prophet Muhammad and ignited riots in Muslim countries.

And Gokcek’s own take on the controversy?

“I don’t think reacting in a violent way, harming others, throwing stones at buildings, killing people, can be justified in any way,” he says.

On the other hand, “It should be understood that many Muslims reacted that way because their faith had been assaulted, in their point of view.”

Although it didn’t get much media coverage, Gokcek says a large percentage of Muslims reacted in a “more logical, thoughtful way” by organizing peaceful protests and, in some instances, calling for a boycott of Danish products.

Jessica McAbee Ozalp, who is president of Dialogue International, says another topic of great interest at the conference will be “Muslim Women in the Public Sphere,” which will be the subject of a panel discussion that McAbee Ozalp hopes will help dispel the perception that women play an inferior role in the Islamic religion.

McAbee Ozalp, who teaches English at UW-Madison and converted to Islam three years ago, says it’s a “great shame” that many non-Muslims hold that view and notes that a chief reason she was attracted to Islam was the respectful manner in which women are treated.

Though there’s no question, she says, that the rift between the Muslim and Western worlds has widened, it also should be noted that a large number of people — especially in this country — have made an effort to broaden their knowledge of Islam since 9/11.

“When I first became Muslim, most people I know — including my family and friends — had no idea what Islam was,” she points out. Three years later, almost everyone she talks to has at least a basic understanding of the religion, she says, “because they’ve made it their business to find out about it. And I think that’s really commendable.”

Gokcek says that’s been his experience as well.

This conference, he says, is another opportunity to bridge that gap.

Reference:

• Conference On Islam Can Help With Rift by Rob Zaleski [The Capital Times]