Gde Dwitya Arief | CRCS | Article
This articles reports the Foreign Policy’s 100 Top Global Thinkers of 2010 that includes New York Mayor, Michael Bloomberg and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of Park 51.
Michael Bloomberg, the wealthy Jewish mayor of New York City, and Feisal Abdul Rauf, an imam and Kuwaiti immigrant to the US, together remind us that Muslims are part of America and that Islam is not attacking the West.
Both are important figures fighting the stigma imposed upon Islam after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. They believe it was not Islam that attacked America. It was a small group of discontented people who said they represented Islam.
The imam and the mayor present us with a choice: surrender to the logic endorsed by the terrorists who say they represent Islam, or reject such a shallow notion and accept that Islam has peaceful values we need to support and promote.
In a world where pessimism about the possibilities of multicultural societies defines the early part of this century, Bloomberg and Rauf’s stance bring optimism back into the debate about the relationship between the state, religion and human rights. Read more here
Gde Dwita Arief is Student of CRCS bacth 2009