September 15, 2009

"Journey into America" Film Screening and Ramadan Iftar Dinner

“Journey into America” is a project led by Ambassador Akbar Ahmed examining the evolution of American identity through the lens of the American Muslim community. Sponsored by the Brookings Institution, American University, and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, the project investigates how Islam tests the boundaries of the core American values of freedom, civil liberties, and society's acceptance of others. The experience of the Muslim community after 9/11 in America serves as the litmus test for how non-Muslim Americans are defining themselves.

The information and analyses from the project are featured in the forthcoming book Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam (Brookings Press, 2009) and in the documentary of the project, also entitled Journey into America. For more information, please see articles in the Huffington Post and CNN.com, The Riz Khan Show on Al-Jazeera English, and the blog, Journey Into America.

Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is currently the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University in Washington DC, the First Distinguished Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has taught at Princeton, Harvard, and Cambridge Universities and is considered “the world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam” by the BBC. He has advised General David Petraeus, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and Secretary Michael Chertoff on Islam and foreign policy. He is regularly interviewed by CNN, CBS, BBC, and Fox News. He is the author of over a dozen award-winning books, including Discovering Islam, which was the basis of the BBC six-part TV series called “Living Islam”. Ambassador Ahmed was one of the 138 Muslim signatories in October 2007 of A Common Word Between Us and You, a letter addressed to Christian leaders in an appeal for peace and cooperation between the two religions.

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