I Cogitate

BILL MOYERS: Once upon a time, heretics were burned at the stake. You're about to meet a man would put a microphone in their hand and have all of us listen to them. Heresy, says Anouar Majid, just might save us from an apocalyptic future.

ANOUAR MAJID: I think all of us are fundamentalist in some sense.

BILL MOYERS: Anouar Majid wrestles with what he believes is the most inflammatory issue of the 21st century — the rivalry between America and the Islamic world, and he has some provocative ideas about what we should be doing to diffuse the conflict. The answer is for both to rediscover their radical roots. His new book is A CALL FOR HERESY: WHY DISSENT IS VITAL TO ISLAM AND AMERICA. To Majid, America as a nation and Islam as a religion are both bound in straitjackets of religious, political and economic orthodoxies. It will take creative thinking from courageous dissenters, he says, to set them free and put the world on a path away from catastrophe.

ANOUAR MAJID: If we do not have dissent, if we do not have heretics among us, if we do not cultivate these habits of mind, in other words to think creatively and imaginatively and so on we're gonna remain doomed.

BILL MOYERS: Anouar Majid came to the U.S. as a student from Morocco twenty years ago. He went on to write numerous articles, a novel, and two acclaimed books about Islamic ideas and culture. And he beaome the founding chair of the department of English at the University of New England, where he also teaches. He was in New York City this week and we invited him to join us here in the studios. Anouar Majid, welcome to THE JOURNAL.

ANOUAR MAJID: Thank you.

BILL MOYERS: You call yourself a Muslim heretic. What is a Muslim heretic?

ANOUAR MAJID: Well, a Muslim heretic is a Muslim who believes in social and cultural pluralism, someone who believes very firmly, strongly believes, that people ought to have different ideas. Because that's the basis of a good and fruitful conversation. If people did not espouse different viewpoints and if people were to all embrace the same orthodoxy, then cultural and social and intellectual creativity withers. And that is very dangerous and eventually detrimental to any civilization.

BILL MOYERS: And you say that for both Muslims and Americans, heresy is the only life-saving measure left to avoid an apocalyptic future.

ANOUAR MAJID: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Why is that?

ANOUAR MAJID: In the case of the Islamic world, we know that religious orthodoxies have stifled creativity and have silenced the voices of dissent. And that has been happening for over a long period of time. Consequently, now the Islamic world, now, is in a very precarious intellectual and cultural state and unable to take care of itself properly if it does not allow for those heretical or dissenting voices to emerge in order to engage in solid meaningful debates, philosophical debates and conversations.

BILL MOYERS: I understand you were moved to write this book in no small part because of your experience when your-- one of your children-- was being treated for leukemia in the hospital. How did that shape the writing of this book?

ANOUAR MAJID: My son was diagnosed with ANL, which is a severe form of leukemia, in 2004. And I was in the hospital for seven months. And right there in that hospital, in his room, I was watching the unfolding war in Iraq and other events.

And on one hand, it was almost a surreal experience or maybe it's a schizophrenic experience. Here I am in this place where everybody is rushing and people are just making this heroic attempt to save lives. And out there in the real world, lives are being wasted almost nonchalantly.

BILL MOYERS: Did you want to write a book based upon that experience?

ANOUAR MAJID: I initially wanted to write a book on why America matters. To explain, because I felt at that time that the United States has not been able to explain it--has not been able to explain it adequately to Muslims and Arabs. Instead of, like for example, in my view, emphasizing the significance, the landmark event of the American Revolution and what the American Revolution had inaugurated and how Americans have have been trying to negotiate the tension between a religious life and a secular one from the very early days of the-- from the late 18th century on to today--

BILL MOYERS: You're very much of an admirer of the American Revolution, right?

ANOUAR MAJID: Oh, absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: I mean, you write about it not only here but elsewhere with great appreciation.

ANOUAR MAJID: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: What about it that appealed to you?

ANOUAR MAJID: I think it's the greatest event in modern history. Probably surpasses, in my estimation, the significance of the French Revolution because it's the first attempt in human history to create a political system where people can live without a king, without a monarch, for example. And-- it was almost like a miracle...

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