Ahmed Bedier is the founder and past executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. In 2006, for the first time, he met with Tampa U.S. Customs and TSA officials to discuss the travel plans of local residents preparing for hajj. He now serves as the president of the Tampa/Hillsborough County Human […]

Ron Young serves as staff consultant for the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East, a national organization of 2,500 American Jews, Christians and Muslims. The committee carries on programs nationwide on dialogue, education and advocacy in support of U.S. policies in the Middle East.

Read the transcript of a July 10, 2006, Pew Forum panel exploring the results of an international survey “focusing on Muslim and Western perceptions of each other and on the Muslim experience in Europe.” The panel, titled “Islam and the West: How Great a Divide?” featured Amaney Jamal, assistant professor in the department of politics at Princeton […]

Read a Southern California Public Radio story about how Los Angeles Muslims see potential for stronger interfaith relations with the Catholic Pope Francis.

Read a March 29, 2001, BBC report about Pope John Paul II becoming the first pope to visit a mosque.

Listen to an April 7, 2005, Morning Edition report from National Public Radio about how Pope Benedict takes a less conciliatory approach to Islam than did his predecessor.

The BBC posts a page on the relationship of Islam and the West.

JoAnn D’Alisera is an associate professor of anthropology at the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. She teaches courses in religion, transnational Islam and Islam in America.

Dina Le Gall is an assistant history professor at Lehman College in the City University of New York. Her focus is in Islamic and middle eastern studies. She is the author of A Culture of Sufism, a history of the origins and spread of Sufism through 1700.