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• Professor Hussain's LMU Web page
• About Oil & Water: Two Faiths: One God
• Professor Hussain's bio

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Tavis: Dr. Amir Hussain is an associate professor of religious studies at Loyola Marymount here in Los Angeles. Born in Pakistan, he was raised in Canada before coming to the U.S. His acclaimed new book is called "Oil and Water: Two Faiths: One God." Professor Hussain, nice to have you on the program, sir.

Amir Hussain: Pleasure to be here, sir.

Tavis: Let me start with this subtitle, because it was, in fact, the subtitle that got my attention, even moreso than the title, with all due respect to whoever came up with the idea for "Oil And Water." Very nice, but the subtitle, 'Two Faiths: One God.' That, to some, I'm certain right now sounds oxymoronic.

Hussain: I think it does, and I think that's why the publishers chose that for the title. But if you look at Islam and Christianity, that's what this book is about. An introduction to Islam for a North American, Christian audience. And I think all of us that worship the one true god have to understand that if there's only one god, and we all claim to worship that one god, we may have different faiths, but there's one god.

Tavis: Isn't that part, and I don't speak for all Americans, this is, I haven't done a scientific study here. It's not like they came to my house for dinner last Sunday and said, "Here's what you gotta ask Amir." But isn't that part of what causes the origin of this disconnect? That there are so many Americans who do not believe that they worship the same god that we do, and if they did, they could, whoever they are, Muslims in this case, they couldn't behave that way. Isn't that where the first disconnect is?

Hussain: I think absolutely. People aren't aware of the fact that Muslims worship the same god that, that they do if they're Christian, if they're Jewish. They think of Allah as being a different god. Muslims worship Allah, we worship God. That's really not the case. Allah is simply the Arabic term for God.

Tavis: Tell me then, beyond that disconnect, where you think the lack of understanding emanates from? Where does this relationship that should be intact break down?

Hussain: I think that relationship breaks down because of the history that Christians and Muslims have had. Christians and Muslims have been interacting with each other since the beginning of Islam. It's not as though Christians were in one part of the world, and Muslims were in a totally different part of the world. I think we've been in each other's lives for the past 1,500 years, and I think that's where some of the disconnect happens.

Tavis: I'm curious as to why you think that - I wanna phrase this the right way. I'm curious as to why you think that disconnect happened where it broke down.

Hussain: I think it broke down the minute we started to be enemies with each other. So if you look, for example, before the Crusades, images of Muslims in western sources, images of Christians in Islamic Muslim sources, were fairly neutral. Once you start having literally a war going on between these two different cultures, if you will, that's where you start to have those enemy images built up. And so, we've had those for almost a thousand years now.

Tavis: Tell me where you think the parallels are, beyond worshipping the same god? I have to think that there are some other parallels somewhere.

Hussain: Absolutely, sir, and I think Islam sees itself as a prophetic tradition, just like Judaism and Christianity. The notion in the Qur'an of social justice. For me as a Muslim, the foundation principle of the Qur'an is standing against oppression, working for justice. I do that in a Muslim framework. You see Christians doing that in a Christian framework, Jews doing it out of a Jewish framework, those kinds of things.

For Muslims and for Christians, particularly, the notion of Jesus. I believe that Jesus was born to Mary, who was a virgin. The virgin birth is an important thing for me. So there are interesting religious similarities that may be more similar between Muslims and Christians than between Christians and Jews.

Tavis: How damaging do you think this terrorist activity, this behavior that no one can condone, whether you're Christian or Muslim...

Hussain: Absolutely.

Tavis: How damaging to the faith do you think that this is? And I ask that 'cause we all understand that we're talking about a handful of people here who are, for lack of a better term, giving Islam a bad name. But how damaging around the globe do you think this is to the faith?

Hussain: Oh, it's incredibly damaging. People don't know an awful lot about Islam. What they know about is the religion of the hijackers, the religion of the terrorists. And they assume that the seven, eight million Muslims in the United States are like that. And of course we're not. It's horribly damaging for Muslims. When 9/11 happened, my first thoughts were for my friends in New York. I grew up in Toronto; I have lots of friends in New York.

And it took me most of that day to make sure that my friend were still alive. I'm feeling under attack as an American, as an American Muslim, particularly. The terrorists, the hijackers, weren't targeting only non-Muslims, non-Americans. They killed all sorts of people there.

Tavis: This probably isn't the most popular thing to say, but I'm curious as to your point of view on this. I'm wondering how it is that the Muslim faith is sustaining these hits every day on its image, and the perception of it, as juxtaposed against Christianity. Some of the worst stuff ever done in the world, as you know, as a scholar, has been done in the name of Christianity. I'm an African American. Slavery comes to mind immediately.

Hussain: Absolutely.

Tavis: Folk have used God and Christianity, more example, they have used God and used Christianity to justify some of the worst evil ever perpetrated on the world. I say that only because whether one likes or loathes it, it is true. And yet, the image, I think, of Christianity has survived. You follow my point?

Hussain: Absolutely.

Tavis: So how does Christianity's image survive all of that nonsense and all that madness and that evil, and a few things happen here or there, tragic, to be sure. But I'm wondering whether or not the Muslim faith, as it were, can recover from this?

Hussain: And I think the faith can. I think the issue becomes, we know our own history. We know the problems that have occurred in our own society. We're not aware of those things in other traditions. My mentor at the University Of Toronto was a brilliant scholar named Wilfred Cantwell Smith. He once wrote that normally, people look at other people's religions as they are, and their own as they ought to be.

Profound statement. Other people's religions as they are. So we see violence committed by Muslims, and say therefore, all Muslims must be violent. Our own, as they ought to be. We see the ideals of Christianity and say, when people are doing horrible things like slavery, like colonizing people, that's really not good Christian behavior. So we're aware of that difference. I think Muslims are living out their ordinary sorts of lives.

I think that's the problem, that we don't realize that there are so many Muslims in this country who are good, decent, Americans. When you think of Islam, think of Mohammed Ali, who's a Muslim. Think of Dave Chappelle, who's a Muslim. Think of Mos Def, who's a Muslim. If Dave Chappelle is walking down the street, you're not gonna run away screaming, saying oh, it's a Muslim, be careful.

You're gonna go up to him, try to congratulate him, say hello. Those kinds of things; that we're people. And I'm talking about people, of course, who aren't ordinary folks like Dave Chappelle and Mohammed Ali. But people like me, who are just here as part of this society, who really want to be an integral part of this society.

Tavis: What does it mean, then, to your point, that the Muslim faith, that Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, according to many studies and surveys, and certainly there are more people around the globe who practice that faith than practice Christianity? How does the growth, the explosion of that faith impact this conversation about how we engage in a dialogue?

Hussain: Well, and I think that that goes back to your first point about some of the issues, as well. Christianity is the largest religion in the world. About two and a half billion Christians. Islam is the second largest.

Tavis: Exactly, the fastest-growing.

Hussain: Exactly, the fastest-growing. And you have people, particularly within the African American communities, my great hero as a kid growing up was Kareem Abdul Jabar. I didn't have a lot of Muslim role models. Kareem was my Muslim role model. Nowadays you see with Latino immigrants converting. So I think there is a sense that Islam is not at all in any way different from the west.

You can be a good westerner. You can be a good American, and be a Muslim. But there are certain things, and I think the issue of social justice, primarily, if you talk to people who convert to Islam, that's one of the things they bring up. That Islam helps them to work toward a world in which we can all be human. I think that's really the key.

Tavis: Thanks for correcting me. I meant to say the fastest-growing. If I say the biggest, I certainly didn't mean that. That said, though, I'm curious as to how, if this dialogue between Christians and Muslims, we hear this all the time. Everybody says we need to communicate, we need to dialogue, we need to engage in conversation. More dialogue, less monologue. We hear that all the time.

And yet, I'm wondering if in a world like the one we live today, because, never mind your earlier point, because perception is reality, I wonder whether or not that dialogue can ever take place. And if it did get traction, how would that happen, you think?

Hussain: I think it starts at the ordinary level of people. We live here in Los Angeles, which has a huge Muslim population, a large Jewish population, a very large Christian population as well. And so it's getting to know your neighbors. Now everyone, particularly in the African American community, the great majority of African Americans, of course, are not Muslim, they're Christian. But everyone that I know in the African American community knows someone who's a Muslim.

Their aunt, their uncle, a cousin. That kind of thing. Connecting with people there to say, well, who are you? What do you believe? Tell me about why this religious tradition makes sense to your life, in a world of choice. We're not living in a world where you were born in the religion that you were born into, and that's what you live in and that's what you died in. You can convert, you can choose.

Here in L.A., we have all those options. So I think it really starts with people, with that face-to-face interaction, that sitting down and talking with each other.

Tavis: I don't mean to cast aspersion on all Christians, but that said, since I happen to be one, I'm not certain that Christians believe that they can be taught anything. (Laugh) But if there is something to be learned from this other faith that we don't engage in dialogue with, what's there to be learned?

Hussain: I think the point for me of interfaith dialogue is not that we try to convert each other. That's what we used to do. Christians learning about Islam so they could convert Muslims. Muslims learning about Christianity, so we could convert Christians to Islam. That to me just doesn't work. The purpose of interfaith dialogue is that we help each other to find what is meaningful in our own traditions.

I, as a Muslim, was inspired tremendously by Dr. King; I know one of your great heroes. That notion of social justice, that it was his Christian duty to oppose what he saw happening. For me as a Muslim, the same kind of thing. That I learn things about social justice, about injustice, about oppression, from looking at Christian teachers. I hope that perhaps some of my Christian students at Loyola Marymount might be able to learn some things from me, as a Muslim. I think that's the key.

Tavis: To your point about Dr. King, who I certainly regard as a great contribution to the world, whatever one might have thought of Christianity prior to King, or for that matter since King, one has to look at this Christian, this particular Christian named Martin King, Martin Luther King Jr. specifically, and say you know what? This guy got it right. Or put it another way, if this is what Christianity is all about, then I get it.

I understand it; and I can deal with that. But King steps out, is out front as a shining example. In the Muslim world today, who do we look to? Who is out front saying to not just Americans, but folk around the globe, that this is not what our faith is all about; but who is that person, who are those persons, that we look to around the globe?

Hussain: There's so many people. In my own life, it's a South African Muslim theologian, Farid Esack, who teaches now in the United States. He has a book where he looks at - 'Qur'an Liberation and Pluralism' is the name of his book, where he, as a South African, helped to fight apartheid as a Muslim. And so Farid's work as a Muslim theologian to me is really important. I look at someone like Mohammed Zacharia, this wonderful calligrapher, an American kid from Ventura, California who converts to Islam, now lives in DC, excuse me, in Arlington, Virginia, and is a wonderful, wonderful artist.

So you see the art, the beauty. Someone like Mos Def, with the songs that he does. 'Black on Both Sides,' amazing album. And you look at that and say, what are the realities of being a young Black man growing up on the east coast.

Tavis: Other people's work, just suggested now by Professor Hussain, that you might wanna check out if you're interested, as I hope you are, in this conversation that we ought to be having in this country, and for that matter, indeed, around the world. The new book by Professor Amir Hussain is "Oil and Water: Two Faiths: One God.' Professor Hussain, again, nice to have you on the program.

Hussain: Thank you, sir.

Tavis: Enjoyed talking to you. Up next on this program, jazz singer Catherine Russell, and a performance. Stay with us.