c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Professor Akbar S. Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, D.C., is author most recently of “Islam Under Siege: Living Dangerously in a Post-Honor World,” published by Polity Press.)

(UNDATED) Throughout history people looking for answers to universal questions have retreated to the mountains. The air is cleaner. There are fewer people around and the hurly-burly of everyday life falls into perspective. One feels closer to heaven.

That is why sages retreat to the mountains. This is true of the Abrahamic tradition of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and the non-Abrahamic faiths such as Buddhism and Hinduism.

Such encounters seem not unusual at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colo., where I spent two weeks in July engaged in intense discussions on Islam and its relations with the West. In seminars attended by corporate executives, organizational leaders and intellectuals, many heard for the first time of the rich history of Islam and the broad variations of its expressions today.

I, in turn, was inspired by their deep desire to learn and by their passion to find ways to bridge the chasms that separate Islam from the West. Most of all, I was fascinated to hear the creative and constructive strategies for bridge building.

The participants were people used to “thinking outside the box.” I only wish members of Congress and officials of the administration could have engaged in this experience as they shape American foreign policy.

Founded in 1950 at an event that drew in world luminaries like the humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, the playwright Thornton Wilder and the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, the Aspen Institute has brought talented thinkers together ever since. The Aspen campuses, situated on 40 acres in the Rockies and on 1,100 acres of the recently acquired Wye River Conference Center near Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, provide extraordinary locations for these events.

My wife, Zeenat, and I were in Aspen to conduct two courses on Islam at the Institute and to give public lectures. We were staying in a suite donated by the late Robert Kennedy. For me, Robert and his brother, John F. Kennedy, symbolize a distinctive humanistic, universal and compassionate approach to world affairs.

The public talk generated much interest. Many Aspen residents had heard an interview I gave on the local radio station, which encouraged them to attend. More than 500 people came with many questions about Islam and its relationship with the West.

The courses on Islam _ one for the group known as the Socrates Fellows and the other for the Society of Fellows _ were the first of their kind at the Institute.

I reminded the participants of the Socrates program of the debt they owed to Islam: Had there been no Islam, they may well not have had access to Socrates. In response to the look of puzzlement on their faces, I explained that a thousand years ago in Muslim Iraq and Spain the writings of Greek philosophers, including Plato’s dialogues about Socrates, were translated into Arabic.

From Arabic, the Greeks were translated into Latin and then much later into national languages like English and French. Islam had acted as a catalyst to the Renaissance and the rediscovery of philosophers like Socrates.

Although the participants of the Society of Fellows were older, and some retired, their enthusiasm to do something positive to improve relations between America and the Muslim world was as infectious as that of the Socrates Fellows.

On the evening of July 4, Zeenat and I joined several participants on the Aspen campus to celebrate Independence Day. I saw every hillock and grassy spot taken as the evening progressed. The fireworks against the backdrop of the mountains were spectacular. Waterfalls, exploding stars and strange geometric patterns of incredible color flashed across the clear night sky. Nothing stirs Americans like the Fourth of July _ and here at the Institute, whose business it is to deal in ideas, those of independence, liberty and freedom come into sharp focus.

Although I met some extraordinarily bright and sympathetic people, and we had some excellent conversations over the week, the image that stays with me is that of the distinguished scholar Rabbi David Saperstein of Washington, D.C., who was one of the participants in my course. He was by the swimming pool at the Institute gym determinedly reading a Charles Dickens novel to his distracted 13-year-old son, splashing about in the pool.

And I thought: The image of a rabbi attending a course on Islam conducted by a Muslim and reading a Victorian novel to his son in an American gym up in the Rocky Mountains best sums up the spirit of the Aspen Institute, which in turn reflects the promise of the Renaissance.

DEA END AHMED