Mushahid Hussain, a Georgetown alumnus who is now a Pakistani senator and a member of the Pakistan Muslim League, spoke in ICC yesterday about the challenge of reconciling the Islamic and Western worlds, saying that the conflict is more political than religious.
“The policies of the West are stoking up the fires of extremism in the Islamic world,” he said. According to Hussain, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are so deeply rooted in one another that conflict between them cannot stem from religious roots.
He said that communication problems arise when the Western world tries to impose its policies on a very traditional Islamic culture.
“This topic is very prevalent in the world right now and he is very efficient in his field,” Nigar Hussain, who is unrelated to Senator Mashahid Hussain, said.
“Being an ex-alum of Georgetown and a member of the foreign relations committee, [Hussain] is very knowledgeable about the politics of the Muslim World.”
He said that terminology plays a major role in the hostility that the Islamic world feels towards the Western world, citing words like “Islamofascism” and “Islamophobia” as a leading cause of extremism.
According to Hussain, these words should be treated the same way as anti-Semitic statements would be.
“There is not a fundamental conflict of interest between the West and the Islamic world,” he said.
“Leaders on both sides of the spectrum have to work to create an environment that does not harbor extremism on either side.”
