John L. Esposito, an expert on political Islam and the impact of Islamic movements from North Africa to Southeast Asia, offers a talk titled The Future of Islam and West-Muslim Relations at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 4, in Chase Hall Lounge at Bates College, 56 Campus Ave.

The event is open to the public at no cost. It is sponsored by the Office of the Multifaith Chaplain and by Mushahada, an organization of Muslim students at Bates. For more information, please call 207-786-8272.

A University Professor at Georgetown University, Esposito is a professor of religion and international affairs and of Islamic studies. He is founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, affiliated with Georgetown.

A consultant to the U.S. Department of State and to corporations, universities and the media worldwide, Esposito has written more than 30 books including Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2002), a Washington Post and Boston Globe best seller. He is editor-in-chief of the four-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World.

Esposito has been interviewed or quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, ABC Nightline, CBS and NBC, and by the BBC and many other influential international media.

He has served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies and as vice chair of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. He is currently a member of the World Economic Forum’s Council of 100 Leaders.

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Esposito lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Dr. Jeanette P. Esposito.

In this photograph by Randy Goodman, William Worthy (center) sets up a question-answer session at a Tehran hotel with Hossein Sheikholislam (left) and Massoumeh Ebtekar (right), spokespeople for the students who held 52 U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days.

Ebtekar, often interviewed by U.S. journalists during the crisis, was dubbed “Screaming Mary” by the media. Now a professor of immunology in Tehran, she talked to Matt Lauer of the Today Show last September about the status of women in her country. Sheikholislam, meanwhile, became Iran’s deputy foreign minister and ambassador to Syria.

As a journalist, Worthy was drawn to societies that had revolted against oppressive, U.S.-backed regimes. At the same time, he believed the U.S. media’s foreign coverage favored American interests. “You have to talk about the imperialist press when you talk about the mass media,” he told an MIT audience in 1973.

Perhaps because of this, Worthy had the U.S. government frequently nipping at his heels. In a well-publicized incident in the 1950s, he couldn’t get his passport renewed after traveling to off-limits China. To a Senate subcommittee investigating the affair in 1957, Worthy said, “I want my passport. And I want it now.”

Worthy, self-described as a pacifist and civil libertarian with a “rebel temperament,” never tired of the hassle nor wavered from a belief in the value of his work in a democratic society. For that, he recently received the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism from Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism.

Photographer Randy Goodman traveled with Worthy and recalls that “he just never rested. Sometimes I’d just want to get something to eat,” she laughs.

Worthy did eat — often while working. One night in Iran, he interviewed Hossein Sheikholislam over dinner, seeking insights into both the crisis and Iran’s Islamic Revolution. As Worthy later reported in The Boston Phoenix: “Martyrdom is a concept very dear…. If one is killed in the struggle, one’s ideas live on, and one’s work is picked up and carried to fruition by others.”

Photographs from the 2006 Bates Fall Semester Abroad trip.

The Bates group trekked up Mount Pamuling to visit the Buddhist monastery, which sits amidst a stunning landscape. Photo by Margaret Maurer-Fazio. [More...]

During a traffic backup during the Bates group’s travel from Sichuan, an entrepreneur takes advantage of the opportunity.

As China becomes a global player, Bates economist Margaret Maurer-Fazio and her students have ringside seats. Bates economist Margaret Maurer-Fazio has tracked China’s economy since the early 1980s. Like an angler pulling trout from a roiling stream, Maurer-Fazio has drawn valuable research from the tumult of China’s economic liberalization. She specializes in certain aspects of the changing labor market — rural-to-urban migration, gender and wage issues, the treatment of Muslim and other minorities, the work course of urban Chinese women. [More...]

Raised in Karachi, Pakistan, Sheikh received her bachelor’s degree from Karachi University, a degree in Islamic law from SM Law College in Karachi and a master’s degree from the American International College in Springfield, Mass.

An educator and human rights activist, Sheikh traveled in December 2001 to a refugee camp on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan to “bear witness to the suffering of Afghani women.” Of her journey, she has said: “This was from my heart. They have suffered simply for being women, and I had to see that with my own eyes.”

Sheikh will discuss the findings from her journey, including what she discovered about herself as a Muslim woman who advocates for the well-being of her sisters and brothers everywhere.

Hitchens is a contributor to such British newspapers as The Guardian and produces a biting biweekly column, “Minority Report,” for The Nation as its longtime Washington correspondent. A contributing editor to Vanity Fair, Hitchens regularly writes for such publications as The Atlantic, The London Review of Books, Granta, Grand Street, Harper’s, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, New Left Review, The New York Review of Books, Newsweek International and The Times Literary Supplement.

Hitchens’ 10 books include the forthcoming Why Orwell Matters (Basic Books, 2002), Letters to A Young Contrarian (Basic Books, 2001) and  The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Verso Books, 2001). Known as a leftist essayist, Hitchens barbecues Democrats as well as Republicans as evidenced in his expose of the Clintons in No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family (Verso Books, 2000).

“Well traveled, hyper-educated . . . [and] always funny,” wrote the Village Voice Literary Supplement, “Christopher Hitchens has no equal in American journalism.”  The San Francisco Chronicle calls Hitchens “a brilliant polemicist and a tireless reporter.”

He periodically appears on CSPAN’s Washington Journal, and shows such as Uncommon Knowledge, Larry King Live, Meet the Press with Tim Russert and Hardball with Chris Matthews.

“While Islam strongly links religion and politics, Islamic law very strongly prohibits suicide,” says Caspi. “Some will say that Islam is to lead the world, but it is to do so by persuasion. The Prophet accepted Christianity and Judaism as monotheistic traditions and called them ‘people of the Book.’

“There has been no Muslim sage who has condemned in a strong , unequivocal way that this act is not the way of Islam,” says Caspi. “Why do we not hear this from the imam of the al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem, from the authorities on Islamic law at al-Azhar University in Cairo? Why do we not hear from the imams in Mecca and Medina?”

“Privately, they condemn the extreme actions of so-called fundamentalists. Publicly, they don’t speak out because they and their families live under the threat of extremists.”

A native of  a small Israeli village near Hadera, Caspi grew up as a Yemenite/Kurdish Jew speaking Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. His journey of 62 years has led him away from his seaside village to an accomplished international career as both a poet and scholar of Islamic and Hebrew biblical literature.

With a B.A. from Hebrew University, an M.A. in psychology from Santa Clara University and a doctorate in Middle Eastern studies from the University of California at Berkeley, he taught for 25 years at the University of California at Santa Cruz with intervening residencies at Oxford, St. Johns’ and Hebrew and Haifa universities.

With deep roots in both the traditions of Islam and Judaism, Caspi’s connection to both Islamic and Jewish cultures serves as the cornerstone for his philosophy of mutual respect in the political arena.

A month after suicide-terror attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. killed almost 6,000 people, fear still locks the voices of the eminent Middle East clergy of Islam, says Mishael Caspi, an Israeli Islamic and Judaic scholar and visiting professor of religion at Bates College.

“While Islam strongly links religion and politics, Islamic law very strongly prohibits suicide,” says Caspi. “Some will say that Islam is to lead the world, but it is to do so by persuasion. The Prophet accepted Christianity and Judaism as monotheistic traditions and called them ‘people of the Book’.

“There has been no Muslim sage who has condemned in a strong , unequivocal way that this act is not the way of Islam,” says Caspi. “Why do we not hear this from the imam of the al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem, from the authorities on Islamic law at al-Azhar University in Cairo? Why do we not hear from the imams in Mecca and Medina?”

“Privately, they condemn the extreme actions of so-called fundamentalists. Publicly, they don’t speak out because they and their families live under the threat of extremists.”

Other topics that Caspi could discuss:

· How the internal divide between Shia and Sunni Muslims expresses itself politically.

· His assessment that successors to Yasser Arafat will quickly surface at his death, and there will be a negotiated peace creating a Palestinian state within six months of Yasser Arafat’s death – or a civil war among Palestinian factions. Arafat, he says, can no longer be the broker for peace because Israelis will never again trust him.

A native of a small Israeli village near Hadera, Caspi grew up as a Yemenite/Kurdish Jew speaking Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. His journey of 62 years has led him away from his seaside village to an accomplished international career as both a poet and scholar of Islamic and Hebrew biblical literature.

With a B.A. from Hebrew University, an M.A. in psychology from Santa Clara University and a doctorate in Middle Eastern studies from the University of California at Berkeley, he taught for 25 years at the University of California at Santa Cruz with intervening residencies at Oxford, St. Johns’s and Hebrew and Haifa universities. With deep roots in both the traditions of Islam and Judaism, Caspi’s connection to both Islamic and Jewish cultures serves as the cornerstone for his philosophy of mutual respect in the political arena.

Huda will consider the meaning of the words by Sufi poet and philosopher Jalal ad-din Rumi: “Remembrance makes people desire the journey; it makes them into travelers.” Is it possible, asks Huda, to think that remembering God in everyday activities can also bring about a hunger for self-annihilation? He believes the inner path of Islamic spirituality, commonly referred to as the Sufi way, balances these two worlds while embracing the encounter with the Holy. Huda also will explore a variety of questions linked to the wisdom of Sufism that can assist in personal liberation.

The symposium is fourth in the Bates College Symposia in Religion and Contemporary Issues series, which focuses on issues of religious tolerance and diversity. The conference is sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Bates, with support from a variety of Bates offices including the deans of the faculty and college, the president, the chaplain, affirmative action and the chairs of social sciences and interdisciplinary studies.

“Islam is a rapidly growing faith in this country, and interreligious understanding necessitates that we talk about the Islamic traditions,” said John Strong, chair and professor of philosophy and religion.

The symposium will begin on at 2:30 Friday, March 3, with registration and introductory remarks. Professor Timothy Gianotti, Penn State University, will discuss The Modern Face of a Medieval Ideal: al Farabi’s al-Madina al-fadila (Virtuous City) and the Islamic Republic of Iran at 4 p.m. Filmmaker Lindsay Miller, senior editor of Morning Edition, WBUR, Boston, will present the film Islam in America at 6:30 p.m. in Room 105 of the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

The March 4 schedule of presentations, all in the Benjamin Mays Center, includes:

• 10 a.m. — Professor Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, on Liberal Islam: Not a Contradiction in Terms
• 1 p.m. — Professor Joel Gordon, University of Arkansas, on Secular Civics and the Onscreen Religious Other in Egypt: Viewing Backward
• 3 p.m. — Professor Salah Moukhlis, University of Meknes, Morocco, on Islam and Identity in the Contemporary Maghrib.