BOB ABERNETHY, host: Ten years after 9/11, relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the US remain complicated. In many areas, tensions have been on the rise. There has been sharp controversy surrounding a proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero, and according to pew, proposed mosques in 36 other locations have also encountered community resistance. There’s also been a growing debate over Islamic religious law or shariah. Measures to restrict or ban the use of shariah have been introduced in nearly two dozen states. Yet in other areas the last 10 years have brought a new spirit of dialogue and cooperation. Kim Lawton has our report.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: As Muslims were observing Ramadan, an unlikely group gathered in Syracuse at the Islamic Society of Central New York mosque. Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and Bahai women joined their Muslim friends for the traditional iftar meal that breaks the daytime fast. The event was organized by Women Transcending Boundaries or WTB,  a grassroots group that started in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. These women didn’t know each other ten years ago, and they admit they probably still wouldn’t. But 9/11 changed everything.

DANYA WELLMON (Cofounder, WTB): WTB took a negative, you know, a really tragic, tragic situation and made something positive from it.

BETSY WIGGINS (Cofounder, WTB): The relationships with these women have enriched my life enormously, have expanded my view of the world in a way that I would never have known before.

LAWTON: Experts say the attacks of 9/11 have had a dramatic impact on interfaith relations in America. But that impact has been felt in complicated and sometimes contradictory ways. On one hand, there has been an unprecedented wave of new interfaith activities, with Muslims playing key roles. At the same time, however, there’s been a growing wave of religious division and public distrust of Muslims.

PROFESSOR SCOTT APPLEBY (University of Notre Dame): The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the repercussions of that trauma put Islam front and center for everyone, everyone in the religious world, and so without 9/11 we would not have had to confront Islam, frankly.

LAWTON: Scott Appleby is director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

APPLEBY:  There developed a variety of initiatives around the country, interfaith dialogue groups meeting together in parishes or in synagogues or in mosques.

LAWTON: In Syracuse, Betsy Wiggins says she feels like she was living in a bubble before 9/11. She was raised Presbyterian and attends a United Methodist church. After the 9/11 attacks, she was disturbed by reports of a backlash against local Muslim women. Betsy’s husband, Jim, had been active in interfaith efforts. At his encouragement, she called the imam at the local mosque.

WIGGINS: And I said, “I am ignorant about Islam, far more ignorant than I want to be, and I want to do something, and I’m especially concerned about Muslim women. Can you tell me someone I can talk to?”

LAWTON: The imam put her in touch with Danya Wellmon.  Wellmon had grown up Methodist, but after a time of spiritual searching converted to Islam in 1992. She says the days after 9/11 were difficult for members of her mosque.

WELLMON:  We did get the phone calls, the harassment. Many Muslim families kept their children home from school, you know, there was the name calling. I know myself, I was run off the road one time and called a terrorist, and it was very scary.

LAWTON: Wellmon says she was surprised but pleased to get Wiggins’s call.

WELLMON: Oh, gosh, we talked for hours on the phone, and then she invited me to her house for coffee to, you know, carry on, to carry on this conversation.

WIGGINS:  She parked right outside there, and she sat in the car for a while, and I could see that she was anxious. She had never met me before, so I went outside, and I just extended my hand and I said, “Please come in,” and she took my hand.

LAWTON: The conversation in Wiggins’s breakfast nook also went on for hours.

WIGGINS: We talked about the things that women are concerned about. We talked about our community, we talked about our families, we talked about this pervasive atmosphere of ignorance and violence and how troubling it was to see it surface in our community.

WELLMON: We both decided, gee, this conversation really should go beyond the both of us.

LAWTON: They each invited nine friends to join them at Wiggins’s house two weeks later. Two weeks after that, 40 women came, and they knew they had struck a chord. They decided to formalize the group and called it Women Transcending Boundaries. Today, there are more than 500 women on WTB’s listserve. They learn about one another’s faith traditions through building relationships. The conversations are open and honest. The group uses what it calls a strict “ouch” policy.

WIGGINS: If anyone feels offended or hurt by anything they can just say, “Ouch,” and we stop and we say, “What is it?” And that person can say, “That really hurt my feelings.”

WELLMON: I think we provided that space and that venue for many women to have the opportunity to come together of different traditions and to really get to know one another.

LAWTON: While the past decade may have brought new interfaith understanding, it has also brought expanded interfaith tensions.

APPLEBY:  Islam has taken the place of the Soviet Union as the next great enemy of the free world, and partly that’s understandable given Al Qaeda, given the threat of Islamic radicalism, the proliferation of jihadist movements. But, of course, those movements are a tiny minority of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world.

LAWTON: Earlier this year, the House Committee on Homeland Security held a series of controversial hearings examining what it called “radicalization” in the American Muslim community.

REP. PETER KING (R-NY): Al Qaeda is actively targeting the American Muslim community for recruitment.

LAWTON: High profile protests against a proposed Islamic center near the site of Ground Zero stoked tensions, as did widely-reported campaigns to burn Qurans. Meanwhile, more than 20 states have debated measures that would bar judges from considering shariah or Islamic law. The polarization has seeped into many local communities. In Nashville, Tennessee, Zainab Elberry is a Muslim activist who has been involved in interfaith work for more than 30 years. She says in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 she was heartened by the flood of support from the community. She received many invitations from religious groups that wanted to know more about her faith.

ZAINAB ELBERRY (Muslim Activist): By that time Islam was known to America with a bang, unfortunately, and at that point I tried my best to educate and to share information with as many people as possible.

LAWTON: She says interfaith relations were largely good. But then things began to change about two years ago. In several US communities, including her own, anti-Islamic groups began spreading a message alleging that Muslim extremists were plotting a stealth campaign to take over America.

ELBERRY: It was really disheartening. I was sad, and I really was a little scared, to be honest with you.

LAWTON: In the town of Mufreesboro, just outside Nashville, there were sustained protests and vandalism surrounding the proposed expansion of the Islamic center. Tennessee legislators debated a measure that would have criminalized the practice of shariah, with some politicians even questioning whether Islam should be considered a religion.

ELBERRY: We are Muslims, but we are also part of the community. It could be me today. It could be another denomination or another tomorrow. We cannot to allow that to continue.

LAWTON: Appleby blames the media for helping to foment a negative atmosphere.

APPLEBY: There’s a general climate that’s sour in our country, and many people have recognized it, and of course interfaith dialogue, constructive relationship between Christians and Muslims—that suffers in a climate like this.

LAWTON: Yet, in some cases, the challenges have generated new interfaith projects. In response to the King hearings, a broad coalition of top religious leaders formed a new initiative called “Shoulder to Shoulder,” which they said would promote tolerance. In Syracuse, Women Transcending Boundaries is trying to put dialogue into action. WTB has gotten involved in a host of service projects, such as a community garden for refugee women. On this day, women from Bhutan were picking fresh vegetables to feed their families.

SARO KUMAR (WTB Member): We don’t speak their language, but from our smiles, our reaching out to them, they feel welcome.

LAWTON: Last year around the anniversary of 9/11, WTB organized a weekend of service projects around the area.  They called it “Acts of Kindness” or A-OK! Weekend. This year, they’re working with several community groups for an even bigger A-OK! event.

WELLMON: We have so much more that we can build here, something positive, than to, you know, stay focused on what divides us.

LAWTON: And they believe that should be the ultimate message of 9/11.

I’m Kim Lawton in Syracuse, New York.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: As the country observes the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, there’s been an extraordinary national conversation about the challenges of religious diversity and the boundaries of tolerance. There were protests and condemnations from around the world over a small, independent Florida church’s threatened plan to burn the Quran. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton called the plan “disrespectful and disgraceful,” and General David Petraeus, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates both said the act could endanger American troops. The debate came on top of another roiling controversy over plans to build an Islamic cultural center near the site of Ground Zero in New York. At a news conference on Friday, President Obama called for religious tolerance:

President Barack Obama: “We have to make sure that we don’t start turning on each other, and I will do everything that I can as long as I am president of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God, and we may call that God different names, but we remain one nation.”

ABERNETHY: This week dozens of prominent Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders held what they called an emergency summit in Washington, DC to address the tensions. The group released a statement denouncing anti-Muslim bigotry and urging respect for America’s tradition of religious liberty:

Rev. Gerald Durley (Providence Missionary Baptist Church): “We are convinced that spiritual leaders representing the various faiths in the United States have a moral responsibility to stand together and to denounce categorically derision, misinformation, or outright bigotry directed against any religious group in this country.”

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick: “This is not America. This is not our country.”

ABERNETHY: Islamic Society of North America president Ingrid Mattson also had a message for Muslims:

Ingrid Mattson: “Don’t use these incidents, as hateful as they are, as hurtful as they are, to justify any kind of hatred against America or Christians, American Christians or Jews.”

ABERNETHY: Meanwhile, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, organizer of the proposed New York Islamic center, said his mission is to build bridges between religious groups. In an op-ed column in the New York Times, he said interfaith support for the center is helping to undermine anti-American radicals who are trying to recruit young Muslims.

We get some perspective now on all this from Scott Appleby, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and an expert on interfaith relations. Professor Appleby, welcome.

PROFESSOR SCOTT APPLEBY (University of Notre Dame): Thank you.

ABERNETHY: Anti-minority sentiment and actions in American history have not exactly been unusual. Is what’s going on now different?

APPLEBY: I think it is different in two respects. First of all, stories like this are immediate. They are broadcast right away, and we quickly hear not only the story itself but the echo of the story, what other people are saying about it. It takes on a life of its own. The second quality is the pervasiveness. It’s everywhere, that is to say, a story that has this kind of charge to it, by that I mean anti-Islamic feeling of whatever type, can be broadcast in a way and the media covers everything in such a way that someone who really doesn’t have a great standing or any expertise or knowledge but who wants to stir the pot, wants to get some attention wherever they may be from, can attract attention by pushing the envelope, doing something outrageous, and the cycle begins again. Another story, immediate echo, and we’re in the middle of a controversy.

ABERNETHY: And the consequences when something like Danish cartoons or some burning of something, when that goes out the consequences can, as all the officials of the United States government have warned, can be very dangerous.

APPLEBY: And the point is we all know that. Anyone who’s paying attention realizes that we are in such a charged atmosphere with this instantaneous communication that can be very controversial, that I have power now, the power to incite, first of all, attention for myself or my cause, but also the feelings of others, because everything has been raised to a level of a lot of heat and not much light.

ABERNETHY: What are the major causes as you see them of the anti-Muslim feeling that’s going on now?

APPLEBY: Well, we have to realize that one thing that’s similar to other periods in our nation’s history of nativism, of attacks against people perceived as foreign, whether they are from another nation or another religion, what’s in common is we’re in an economic crisis. These episodes flare up when Americans are feeling displaced or threatened that their economic well-being and even their citizenship is somehow called into question by a threatening minority. And, of course, Islam in America is a tiny, tiny minority. Why pick on Islam? Because for nine years, almost a decade, the popular mentality is we’re in some kind of war with Islam, which of course is a distorted reading that’s not sufficiently shouted down by the right people. We are not in a war with Islam. We are in a conflict with a tiny minority of radicals who are denounced by the majority of Muslim leaders and Muslims around the world.

ABERNETHY: Do you think that there is some justification, however, for thinking that there is something about Islam itself that condones or perhaps even encourages violence?

APPLEBY: No, there’s nothing about Islam itself that makes Islam stand apart from other religions. All the major world religions have texts and traditions that can be twisted, that can be interpreted to condone violence, including Christianity. Islam is not better or worse in that regard, that is, in what the sources of Islam say about violence. There are verses in the Quran and in the Hadith of the Prophet, the traditions of the Prophet,that can be read in either direction. Islam itself as a religion is in a different context today in the United States than Christianity or Hinduism in India, and so there are a lot of factors that make parts of the Islamic world and parts of the reaction in this country more vehement, more charged, and it doesn’t have a lot to do with the religion itself.

ABERNETHY: You have called “the biggest lie” what? The imagining that all Islam is—

APPLEBY: Rights, the assumption that Islam is inherently, that in its very nature Islam is violent, evil, that it’s a religion that produces murderers, liars, thieves, unpatriotic, etc., etc., etc. I’m a Catholic. The same thing was said about Catholics, and there are some parts of Catholic history, by the way, that can be interpreted as being antidemocratic and anti-American. The popes denounced religious freedom in the nineteenth century. So there are parts of a tradition, whether it’s Christianity, Islam, or Judaism that can be lifted up, twisted, and used as a cudgel, as a weapon, against people you don’t like because you are fearing them for a variety of reasons, and that’s what’s happened to Islam today.

ABERNETHY: Scott Appleby of the University of Notre Dame, many thanks.

“This is a Catholic institution which is bound … to uphold the moral law.”

Archbishop RAYMOND BURKE (Former Archbishop of St. Louis, at National Catholic Prayer Breakfast): The proposed granting of an honorary doctorate at Notre Dame University to our president, who has been so aggressively advancing an anti-life and anti-family agenda, is rightly the source of the greatest scandal.

ABERNETHY: While Archbishop Burke received a standing ovation, many other Catholics noted that Notre Dame has been inviting presidents to its campus since the days of Dwight Eisenhower. Father Thomas Reese of Georgetown University says that’s part of academic freedom.

Father THOMAS REESE (Senior Fellow, Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University): I don’t think it’s a scandal. Universities should be places where we have discussion, debate, where people of different views come together to argue, and when the bishops get involved in trying to censure people, ban speakers — I think it’s not helpful.

Archbishop BURKE: This is a Catholic institution which is bound by — its title is Catholic, its identity is Catholic — to uphold the moral law, and that’s the source of the scandal.

“If you ban people from your campus … it comes across as an acknowledgment that you really don’t have good arguments.”

Fr. REESE: You can’t be afraid do discuss these issues, to debate these issues. If you ban people from your campus, if you censor people, it comes across as an acknowledgment that you really don’t have good arguments that are convincing to either your students or that can win in a debate over these issues.

ABERNETHY: For his part, at a news conference last month Obama sought common ground.

President BARACK OBAMA: I believe that women should have the right to choose. But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we could agree on.

ABERNETHY: Back at Notre Dame, Professor Scott Appleby saw a bright side.

Dr. SCOTT APPLEBY (History Professor, University of Notre Dame): If one result of the president coming to commencement is that there’s a vigorous public debate and discussion about the issues, well, that’s a victory really for a university.

ABERNETHY: Many of the protesters at Notre Dame were well known anti-abortion activists from around the country, but their views do not represent the opinions of most Catholics. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 50 percent of American Catholics approve of Notre Dame’s invitation; 28 percent do not.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The grieving for the thousands killed in Tuesday’s attacks comes on the eve of the Jewish High Holidays — Rosh Hashanah, beginning this Monday night, and Yom Kippur, beginning at sundown a week from Wednesday. It’s a time of repentance and asking forgiveness from God and each other for wrongs done during the past year, wrongs Jews ask to be wiped away on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Questions of justice and forgiveness, revenge and retribution are just some of the difficult theological and moral issues raised by last Tuesday’s terrorism, and we want to explore them now with four religious leaders and scholars.

Rabbi Jack Moline leads the Agudas Achim Congregation of Conservative Jews in Alexandria, Virginia.

Dr. Akbar Ahmed is the chair of Islamic studies at the American University in Washington.

Dr. Scott Appleby is a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. He joins us from Chicago.

And the Rev Dr Thomas Long is professor of preaching at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. Welcome to all of you.

Dr. Long, let’s begin with some of the pastoral questions. When terrorists killed thousands of innocent people, where was God?

REV. DR. THOMAS LONG (Candler School of Theology, Emory University): Well, we must be very modest about saying where God was and what God was doing in any event of such a catastrophe as this. We do know some things, though, and that is that wherever there is suffering and the cry of suffering people, we know that God hears that cry and participates in that suffering. And we know that God is in the midst of the suffering working for good. We know this from the scriptural traditions.

ABERNETHY: What do you think an event like Tuesday’s terrorism does to people’s religious faith?

DR. LONG: I think it has both a negative and positive effect. For some people, it is such a shaking event their faith in God is called into question. But for most people, even people who have not thought of themselves as conventionally religious, this kind of event puts them to the basic questions and recalls them to a rekindled faith in a trusting God.

ABERNETHY: Rabbi Moline, the question “Where is God in the midst of suffering?” is a familiar one to Jews, especially after the Holocaust. Can anyone blame God for all that is evil?

RABBI JACK MOLINE (Agudas Achim Congregation): Blame is a question that troubles us as human beings, I think more, than, it is a theological concern for us. It’s important to hold God accountable for the world that God created and in which we live. But it is far more important for us to take responsibility for our own actions — whether we meet the potential with which we’ve been endowed.

ABERNETHY: Dr. Ahmed, as we conduct this conversation we don’t know yet exactly who was responsible for the attacks, but many signs point to Islamic fundamentalists. How could anyone in the name of Islam take so many innocent lives?

DR. AKBAR AHMED (Islamic Studies, American University): Well, first of all it is important that we clarify what Islam says about this kind of action. The Koran specifically states that the taking of one individual life is the taking of the lives of entire humanity. It totally condemns this kind of killing of innocent women, children, civilians, so that is the Islamic position. Muslim organizations in America have all condemned what took place. So it is not really an Islamic action; it is the action perhaps of some Muslims, and we need to try to put that in context.

ABERNETHY: But isn’t it true that, perhaps by misunderstanding the Koran, but isn’t it true that Islamic terrorists see the United States as an enemy?

DR. AHMED: Yes, some of them do.

ABERNETHY: Feel that they need to harm us, in the name of protecting their religion and that they will be martyrs if they do that?

DR. AHMED: Absolutely right. There’s a lot going on in the Muslim world. Remember, we are talking about a civilization of over a billion people — 55 states in various states of development, various positions on the trajectory of development. And the result is that many of them are very frustrated at the change, at the transformations — many of them identify the United States for many of the problems that they face.

ABERNETHY: Do the majority of Muslims and the leaders of the majority of Muslims have a responsibility to speak out all over the world and condemn what happened?

DR. AHMED: I think most of them did. I think, certainly, I heard King Abdulluah of Jordan, I’ve heard the president of Pakistan, I’ve heard the Saudis; they have very strongly condemned what took place because that cannot be justified on any Islamic or theological ground.

ABERNETHY: Dr. Appleby in Chicago, you’ve written extensively about religious fundamentalism, including Islamic fundamentalists. What do we need to know about what’s driving Muslim terrorists?

DR. SCOTT APPLEBY (History Professor, University of Notre Dame): There are three things driving Muslim terrorists. First of all, the state of Israel and the perception that Israel is a surrogate of the United States — a kind of beachhead in the Middle East — so that United States interests can be served though Israel. Those interests are oil, primarily. Sometimes, the rhetoric goes the other way, that the United States is a dupe of Israel, but there’s that spearhead of encroachment. The second issue is a perceived hypocrisy on the part of the United States and its foreign policy. We are the great advocate of democratization, freedom, liberalism, and yet the Islamists see us propping up with regimes like that in Egypt, which are not democratic, and even worse, in Algeria in which there were democratic elections almost a decade ago that were overturned and we were silent about it. You can go around the Middle East and see signs of what is perceived as American hypocrisy because, the Islamists would say, the people are not able to speak. The people are Islamic, want to be governed by Islamic law, and the United States supports corrupt regimes. Finally, the underlying cultural problem, though, in both of these situations, is what one Iranian intellectual called “Westoxication” — being intoxicated by Western lifestyle, both drunk by it and also poisoned by it. So the pervasiveness of Western culture which is a threat to Islamic ways of life, to traditional ways of life around the world.

ABERNETHY: But what does that mean then for what we should do in the way of response? Let’s move this now to what we should do in the way of response. What do the religious traditions have to say about it? What does the just war tradition within Christianity have to say about it?

DR. APPLEBY: Well, the just war tradition would say that there can be no kind of retaliation that is not strictly defensive and limits the casualties to combatants. And the jihad tradition as well would impose similar restrictions on any kind of use of violence. The difficulty with invoking either the Christian just war tradition theory or theories of jihad is that the combatants of today would say the circumstances in today’s world don’t fit neatly into those categories. How do you discriminate among combatants and noncombatants? How do you limit the casualties? And what constitutes a defensive action?

ABERNETHY: Tom Long in Atlanta, what does your Protestant tradition have to say that would be helpful to those deciding what the United States should do now?

REV. DR. LONG: Well, the Protestant tradition would call us to recognize that all humans are created in the image of God, even those who commit acts of terrorism, and while condemning the act of terrorism we must not demonize any class of people or group of people who did this. We are also taught that we ourselves were enemies, enemies of God, and the cross is God’s answer to our active opposition to God’s will. So we are joined in a solidarity with those who have committed violence. We ourselves have done it.

ABERNETHY: Do you feel that that could go as far as to be forgiving?

REV. DR. LONG: Yes, I think it does. I think that we are hoping for justice in this situation, but we should always treat those who have committed the acts of violence as fellow human beings, and we should seek to love our enemies.

ABERNETHY: Rabbi Moline, want to get in on that?

RABBI MOLINE: I think there is a very strong dividing line between Christian theology and Jewish theology. For us to consider forgiveness without contrition first, I think, is obscene. The acts that were perpetrated here were willful acts of evil. For us to forgive without an expression of contrition from those who were in any way responsible is akin to putting a target on the tallest buildings in the United States.

ABERNETHY: Dr. Ahmed, what would the Islamic tradition have to say about what would be an appropriate American military response to what happened?

DR. AHMED: That’s a very important question. We need to identify the perpetrators, the people who committed this crime. I agree with the rabbi that the scale of this crime is so huge. At the same time, we need to be careful not to identify the entire Islamic civilization as the people behind this crime. Don’t forget there are millions of Muslims living in America who are horrified by what happened. Don’t forget that thousands of Muslims died in the twin centers. In fact, one of my relatives rang up his father just minutes before the center collapsed and he said, “Don’t worry, I’m alright. I’m seeing the first center collapsing, and it will be alright.” That is the last we heard of him. Now like me, he is a Pakistani-background citizen, but a citizen of America living here. So there are many, many Muslims involved in exactly the suffering that other people are going through.

ABERNETHY: So what do all of you think of the idea that those who harbor or help terrorists, wherever they are, should be targets as well as the terrorists themselves?

DR. AHMED: I think that the world that has opened up now this new chapter in world history, I really see this as a defining moment not just in American history, but in world history. I think this threat of terrorism will become a very serious, a very real threat. And I believe that we need to be able to combat that in the future in a very effective way.

DR. APPLEBY: In terms of the U.S. response, what I’d like to see and the world I’d like to see, the military retaliation may well be in place, but it would be couched within a much broader and wiser set of policies on the part of the United States. I would love to see a larger percentage of our defense budget go to promoting civil society, democratization working hand in hand with the people who oppose us, especially the people on the outer fringes who wouldn’t ordinarily oppose us, but the problem with the kind of targeted military retaliation which we’re going to see, there’s no doubt about it, but the problem is that it’s like a hydra head: you cut off one head, and three more grow back. That is, there are substantive structural issues here. There are issues of justice. Yes, we do have some enemies that are, we can use words like evil, we can use the language of ethics, there’s no question about that, but they wouldn’t have any support whatsoever, and they do have some support, if there weren’t structural issues of justice underlying their claims. A sense of grievance, a sense that they’ve been denied rights and privileges and that so much of the resources of the world go to a relatively few number of the small percentage of the people of the world.

ABERNETHY: Dr. Ahmed, while you’re here, let me ask you this. The government of Pakistan, which you know well, you’re a citizen of Pakistan, you’re a former Pakistani diplomat, may well have a very difficult choice to make here. We want them to do everything possible to stop terrorism next door to them in Afghanistan. If they do that, they offend a lot of terrorist sympathizers in Pakistan, so what should they do?

DR. AHMED: Very difficult situation for Pakistan, and they have to really decide which way they’re going. Because if they’re going to create a civil society, a democratic society for the future, they have to also make some hard decisions. Don’t forget that Pakistan itself is going through a crisis. The old structures are collapsing, social structures, economic structures, political structures. And it is a very volatile region of the world. And it is an important region of the world — 145 million people and a nuclear power.

ABERNETHY: But do you feel they have to change course and help the United States?

DR. AHMED: Absolutely, they have to make a very clear choice and come in either helping the U.S., and saying we stand shoulder to shoulder with you — this is a terrible act. Not just verbal sympathy but practical sympathy or then forsake the possibility of being an ally with the Americans.

ABERNETHY: I want to get back to the pastoral role here with which we started. Tom Long, what do you say to people who are filled with rage and want to strike out right now, immediately? How would you counsel, for instance, a friend of mine who said this week, “I want to kill someone”?

REV. DR. LONG: I think there is a sense in which we all feel that. It’s a very human thing to want to strike back, to feel revenge, to want retaliation. I think we don’t have to act out of those feelings. I think we own those feelings, but we don’t have to act out of them, that we are called to repay no one evil for evil, so I would say to your friend, “We all feel that way. Your humanity calls you to act out of another set of principles.”

ABERNETHY: Rabbi Moline?

RABBI MOLINE: I think it’s important to distinguish between pastoral care and good theology here. I would concur that people’s feelings of anger — I share those feelings of anger — need to be acknowledged, but that we have to be cautioned, that our religious traditions are strong because they have been tested over time. Our reactions are short-termed and temporal, and the best thing right now is to turn back to our traditions for their guidance rather than to act out of any kind of internal impulse.

ABERNETHY: That would be very hard to restrain very, very forceful action.

RABBI MOLINE: That’s why we are a community instead of a collection of individuals.

ABERNETHY: Tom Long, you were talking about forgiveness earlier. Very quickly, does this idea of forgiveness, does that apply to nations or just to individuals?

REV. DR. LONG: I think it applies to nations as well. I think forgiveness is more than just a one-to-one thing. But I also would want to caution myself and others that forgiveness is not easily gained, that this is a process. That we have to go through feelings of outrage before we can arrive at forgiveness. But it is something we forgive peoples as well as individual persons.

ABERNETHY: Very quickly, Scott Appleby in Chicago, do you have anything to add here about how we should proceed now?

DR. APPLEBY: I don’t know if I’d use the word forgiveness, but I think it’s in our own interest as a nation to respond in a more nuanced and flexible way, because there are, as I have suggested, very real problems about the spread of democracy, the sharing of resources on the planet, and questions of simple justice that, among other things, this terrible incident should cause us to reflect. This is not to encourage such incidents anyway, but cause us to reflect upon the root causes of it.

ABERNETHY: Our time is up. Our thanks to Rabbi Jack Moline and Professor Akbar Ahmed here in Washington, to Dr. Scott Appleby in Chicago, and to Reverend and Professor Thomas Long in Atlanta.