Growing up, I never once met a Muslim. Nor can I remember ever being in the presence of a person who professed the Islamic faith. In my suburban setting, there seemed be no one of this religious tradition.

When, as an adult, I became a student of theology, the focus of my course of study remained squarely on Christianity. That meant hardly ever mentioning Islam, much less going into its history and teaching. Despite an advanced study of theological issues, my colleagues and I remained almost completely ignorant of this other tradition.

Even when I visited the Middle East in 1965 with a group of Catholic colleagues, I spent only a few days in part of Jordan and there my focus was on the places where Jesus walked.

Looking back, it is hard for me to believe that a faith shared by about a billion other people was a blank slate for me. How could I have remained ignorant of such an important factor in the world’s life?

Fortunately, one of the benefits of living long is the opportunity to remedy some areas of ignorance. I feel thankful at having my life stretch over enough decades for me to begin learning something about Islam.

In that effort I have had the good luck to become acquainted with a person who combines the life-long practice of Islam with a scholar’s knowledge of this tradition. Ali Asani teaches Indo-Muslim culture and languages at Harvard and is often called upon to help people outside the university to attain a better understanding of his faith.

He has long been used to hearing stereotypes about his religious heritage. “How can you believe in a religion like Islam that espouses terrorism and violence?” a graduate student friend once asked him.

“That student could not reconcile images of violence with me,” said Asani, who happens to be a very mild-mannered person.

This identification of Islam with terrorism has taken hold, Asani thinks, because of what he calls “the othering of Muslims in the media.” Americans read, hear, and watch news material likely to implant false impressions in our psyches. Without critical analysis, we easily jump to the association between Islam and violence.

“These perceptions go back centuries” Asani explains. Christians and others have indulged in a mutual stereotyping that dehumanizes people different from themselves. This amounts to a “clash of ignorances” rather than of civilizations. At its most extreme, this kind of collision can lead to ethnic cleansing and other monstrous results.

Western societies are filled with mistaken notions about Muslims. For example, we tend to think that all Muslims are Arabs. But the Muslim population of Asia extends eastward to the Pacific, and most Muslims are not Arabs. And we assume that all Arabs are Muslim whereas, in the United States, 70 percent of Arabs are Christian.

Being a Muslim in one country is very different from being a Muslim elsewhere. Living in Saudi Arabia, for example, contrasts sharply with being Muslim in Senegal, with the latter’s long tradition of peaceful diversity. When Islam is linked to political power, then it takes on a very different face.

What Islam means is submission to the one God. A Muslim is a person who submits to that God. In this definition, the great figures of the Hebrew Bible, starting with Abraham and Moses, were Muslim. So was Jesus, and others in the New Testament.

The notoriously divisive word Jihad means to struggle or to strive. Originally, it was used in a defensive mode as when you struggled to protect your neighbor. But in the 9th century, the word was first employed to justify imperial rule.

As to suicide bombers, Asani states bluntly: “They have nothing to do with religion; there is no scriptural justification for it; these are political acts.” He sees poverty, dehumanization, and colonialism playing into these horrific acts of violence.

Asked about the madrasas, Muslim schools seen in the west as seed beds of violence, this scholar portrays them, in part, as the way poor people, as distinguished from the elite, learn basic skills. To some degree, they are a response to colonialism. It is a mistake to judge that all Muslim education fosters warlike attitudes.

The most important lesson to take away from Asani’s approach is the error of judging a religious tradition outside of its cultural setting. Islam is so diverse that generalizations about it are hazardous. You must remain aware of the sharp differences that characterize this religion from situation to situation.

These insights from a Muslim scholar can serve to indicate how I am attempting to chip away at my own ignorance. Little by little, I hope to learn more about a major force in our world.

Getting to know personally at least one man who is steeped in that tradition is a large step forward. Personal connections probably do more to break down stereotypes than all the books I could ever read about Islam.

Richard Griffin