Who Speaks for Islam? by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed

Sunday, 10 May 2009 | Leadership Library

Every week The Wall Street Journal Europe Future Leadership Institute highlights a management or leadership book in The Wall Street Journal Europe. Readers have the opportunity to win a copy of the book by following the instructions in the WSJE Future Leadership Institute box in the paper.

Description

Are we on the verge of an all-out war between the West and 1.3 billion Muslims? When the media searches for an answer to that question, they usually overlook the actual views of the world's Muslims.
Who Speaks for Islam? is about this silenced majority. This book is the product of the Gallup World Poll's massive, multiyear research study. As part of this groundbreaking project, Gallup conducted tens of thousands of interviews with residents of more than 35 nations that are predominantly Muslim or have significant Muslim populations.
Gallup posed questions that are on the minds of millions: Is Islam to blame for terrorism? Why is there so much anti-Americanism in the Muslim world? Who are the extremists? Where are the moderates? What do Muslim women really want?
Grounded in Gallup World Poll data, not in contentious rhetoric, Who Speaks for Islam? brings data-driven evidence -- the voices of a billion Muslims, not those of individual "experts" or "extremists" -- to one of the most heated and consequential debates of our time.

• Counterintuitive Discoveries in Who Speaks for Islam?
• Who speaks for the West? Muslims around the world do not see the West as monolithic. They criticize or celebrate countries based on their politics, not based on their culture or religion.
• Dream jobs When asked to describe their dreams for the future, Muslims don't mention fighting in a jihad, but rather getting a better job.
• Radical rejection Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustified.
• Religious mainstream Those who condone acts of terrorism are a minority and are no more likely to be religious than the rest of the population.
• Admiration of the West What Muslims around the world say they most admire about the West is its technology and its democracy -- the same two top responses given by Americans when asked the same question.
• Critique of the West What Muslims around the world say they least admire about the West is its perceived moral decay and breakdown of traditional values -- the same responses given by Americans when posed the same question.
• Gender justice Muslim women want equal rights and religion in their societies.
• Respect Muslims around the world say that the one thing the West can do to improve relations with their societies is to moderate their views toward Muslims and respect Islam.
• Clerics and constitutions The majority of those surveyed want religious leaders to have no direct role in crafting a constitution, yet favor religious law as a source of legislation.

Adapted from Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed. Copyright © 2007 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.

Author Biographies

• John L. Esposito, Ph.D., is a leading expert on the Muslim world. He is University Professor and a professor of religion and international affairs and of Islamic studies at Georgetown University and the founding director of Georgetown's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding in the Walsh School of Foreign Service. He is also the past president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies and a consultant to governments and multinational corporations. Esposito is editor in chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World and Oxford Islamic Studies Online. His more than 35 books include What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam and Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. He currently resides in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Jeanette P. Esposito, Ph.D.
• Dalia Mogahed, is a senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. She leads the analysis of Gallup's unprecedented study of more than 1 billion Muslims worldwide. Mogahed also directs the Muslim-West Facts Initiative (www.muslimwestfacts.com), through which Gallup, in collaboration with The Coexist Foundation, is disseminating the findings of the Gallup World Poll to key opinion leaders in the Muslim World and the West. She travels the globe engaging audiences on what Muslims around the world really think. Her analysis has appeared in a number of leading publications, including The Economist, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy magazine, Harvard International Review, Middle East Policy, and many other academic and popular journals. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Mohamed, and two sons, Tariq and Jibreel.

Excerpt

In sharp contrast to the popular image of silent submissiveness, Gallup findings on women in countries that are predominantly Muslim or have sizable Muslim populations hardly show that they have been conditioned to accept second-class status. Majorities of women in virtually every country we surveyed say that women deserve the same legal rights as men, to vote without influence from family members, to work at any job they are qualified for, and even to serve in the highest levels of government. In Saudi Arabia, for example, where as of this writing, women were not allowed to vote or drive, majorities of women say that women should be able to drive a car by themselves (61%), vote without influence (69%), and work at any job for which they are qualified (76%). Egyptian women, who have faced far fewer restrictions than their Saudi counterparts, speak even more strongly in favor of women's rights, with 88% of Egyptian women saying that they should be allowed to work at any job for which they are qualified. In Egypt, as in other parts of the Muslim world, this attitude is not just a theory, as a full third of professional and technical workers in Egypt are women, on par with Turkey and South Korea.
If you want to put faces to these data, observe women such as Souad Saleh, an assertive and outspoken woman whose area of expertise is fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence. Saleh is an Islamic jurist and professor at al-Azhar University, the most prominent institution of Islamic scholarship and authority in Sunni Islam. She was the first woman dean of faculty at the institution and is a prolific writer on issues ranging from family law to women's rights, authoring more than seven volumes on Islam and at least four in-depth research works. A regular on pan-Arab television and one of the most outspoken preachers on Islam, her message is clear: "Islam is simple and holds women in high esteem."
Celebrity preachers aren't the only ones who defy conventional wisdom. There are also women like Salwa Riffat, an Egyptian woman now in her late 50s who earned her bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from Cairo University and went on to earn her Ph.D. in civil engineering. At the same time, she managed to successfully balance raising a family and fulfilling the demands of her career. She is now a professor of engineering, teaching men and women alike. "Women of my generation were at the forefront of a new era in Egypt," she says, referring to the wave of women attending college that gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s. "Now, it's hardly something worth noting that in Egypt, universities are filled with women, in some cases more than men, and they are excelling." The valedictorians of Cairo's elite medical school are famously known to almost always be female.
These cases are hardly unique. Nationally representative self reported data show percentages of women in Iran (52%), Egypt (34%), Saudi Arabia (32%), and Lebanon (37%) with postsecondary educations. In the United Arab Emirates and Iran, women make up the majority of university students. However, in Muslim countries -- as well as in non-Muslim countries -- Gallup finds a wide range of female education with percentages of women pursuing postsecondary educations dipping as low as 8% and 13% in Morocco and Pakistan, respectively, which is comparable with 4% in Brazil, or 11% in the Czech Republic.