SEPT. 11 AFTERMATH GU Center Copes With Media Focus By Alex Finerman Hoya Staff Writer

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Georgetown has become a prominent source for information regarding Muslim thought, primarily due to the presence of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding on campus.

The demand for knowledge about Islam and the terrorists’ motives after Sept. 11 has led to an “exponential increase” in work for the Center, Director John Esposito said.

In response to the work increase, Esposito said the Center has added another staff member to handle only the telephone calls. He said that he and his staff are now coming to the realization that they are being asked to do more work than they can handle.

“It’s increasingly become a realization that we can’t continue at the pace that we did after Sept. 11. It would not be an exaggeration to say that for many people, you could be talking anywhere from three to eight hours of additional work just for the media, for example, let alone requests for debriefings . most of my colleagues have been working 50 percent more than they have [in the past],” he said.

Esposito says the message that the center relays is “to distinguish, as the president has, between terrorism and the war against terrorism, and Islam; that what we have here are extremists who like Christian and Jewish extremists hijack their religion to legitimate their actions.”

“The primary thing the center has done has been teaching within the School of Foreign Service and the university,” Esposito said. “Most of my colleagues have been very prolific authors, writing books, articles and participating in government briefings and speaking all over the world.”

As well as serving as director of the center, Esposito is a professor of religion and international affairs and is regarded as one of the top western scholars of Islam and the Muslim world. He is the author of The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality, among others, and the editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World.

The center has been involved with all the major networks; its members have appeared on programs like “Nightline” and CNN specials. It has also been a source for international media, with interviews for the BBC and Swedish, Dutch, Irish and Japanese television.

“We’ve been involved with every possible National Public Radio show,” Esposito said. Scholars at the center have been quoted by The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and Esposito himself has written opinion pieces for the Times and the Boston Globe.

“Whether you’re talking to the media, to members of Congress, to people in the military, to corporations, suddenly people are beginning to say that it’s not just a matter of responding to a specific crisis. They’re realizing that Americans need to know more about the religion of Islam and about the Muslim world, as well as deal with extremism.”

Esposito and his colleagues are also in significant demand to advise organizations and government. Members of the center have been asked to speak with Congressmen, members of the administration, Pentagon officials, corporations, investment houses, churches and mosques, Esposito said.

The center emerged as a major television source because, Esposito said, “it happened to be defined and positioned to do precisely and to respond precisely, regrettably, to the tragedy that’s occurred. The center was founded to build bridges of understanding between the Muslim world and the West and between Islam and Christianity.”

Americans must also recognize “an issue of anti-Americanism . a broad-based anger with American foreign policy in much of the Muslim world and an anger that exists among mainstream people who like America and admire its principles, but don’t think we live up to it and who work within the political process.” It is important to differentiate between them and “a deadly minority of people who hate us.”

Esposito said America’s success is contingent on a re-evaluation of U.S. foreign policy, which will include involving public diplomacy along with military and economic efforts.

“There are issues . that exacerbate the instability and the politics within the region that feed anti-Americanism. If we don’t solve them, we’ll continue to see authoritarian regimes, we’ll continue to see instability and we’ll continue to see the kind of seed from which people like bin Laden can recruit new soldiers.”

In his opinion piece for the New York Times, Esposito criticized that the interpretations of this conflict as a clash of civilizations “rely on an outdated monolithic notion of civilization . Civilizations, like countries, are complex, encompassing diverse and often contradictory beliefs, values and forces,” he wrote.

According to Esposito, the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding was founded in 1993 to address the relationship of the Muslim world and the West, and of Islamic belief.It was the brainchild of Hasib Sabbagh, a wealthy contractor and philanthropist from the Middle East who had founded an organization of similar character in Europe.

“I think [the recent events] have highlighted the significance of the center and the work of the center, and the work of Georgetown,” Esposito said. “Because of its Jesuit nature, the role of the School of Foreign Service and the longstanding commitment to the role of religion in international affairs, the university is poised to make a very special kind of contribution.”