NYU Report Offers Roadmap for Improved Relations with Muslims in the West

By James Devitt

    As western nations see their Muslim populations grow, government officials and policy experts recommend improving relations between Muslim and non-Muslim communities in these countries through locally driven community building initiatives and training media professionals to be more conscientious of how they portray Muslim communities, according to a new report released by NYU’s Center for Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West, entitled “Muslim Youth and Women in the West: Source of Concern or Source of Hope?”

      The recommendations stem from a spring conference held in Salzburg, Austria that included Salzburg Mayor Heinz Schaden; Ursula Plassnik, Austrian federal minister for European and international affairs; Iqbal Riza, special advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General on the Alliance of Civilizations; Ambassador Hans Gnodtke of the German Federal Foreign Office; and Farah Pandith, a senior U.S. State Department advisor on Muslim engagement.

      The Muslim population is an estimated 15 to 20 million in Europe and 3 to 6 million in the United States. The Salzburg conference—which included more than 60 youth and women activists and community leaders, religious leaders, policy-makers, policy analysts, scholars, and government officials from Canada, the United States, and Europe—sought ways to address the tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in Western countries, and how they can be overcome.

      “As citizens, Western Muslims could become an inspiration for the larger Muslim world as it struggles to strike a balance among faith, tradition, and modernity,” said Mustapha Tlili, founder and director of the Center for Dialogues. “The harmonious integration of Muslim communities in the West could also lead to a more peaceful and productive relationship between the West and the Muslim world.”

      The conference offered a series of recommendations, which include using journalism associations to train media professionals to be more conscientious of how they portray Muslim communities; encouraging local, rather than national, authorities to develop and engage in community building initiatives; encouraging local Muslim associations to organize events to engage the general public and to establish partnerships with other community organizations; and urging national governments and the European Union to develop indicators to measure Muslims’ integration into their home countries.

      The Center for Dialogues emerged from the tragedy of September 11th, which highlighted the need for greater communication among the United States, Europe, and the Muslim world. Dialogues was founded as a forum for constructive debate among the various religious, intellectual, economic, and political sectors of American, European, and Islamic societies. The Center for Dialogues is committed to a number of academic, policy, and outreach activities, including international conferences on a variety of topics of critical importance today—the clash of perceptions, elections, the nature of authority in the Islamic world and in the West, among others—which result in the development of policy recommendations. To download the report go to: http://www.islamuswest.org