What's your area of study, and which of your experiences or methods could help educators address the events of 9/11/01 in future lessons?

I have spent most of my career as an anthropologist working with Muslim communities in Africa. One of my first impulses, after September 11^th, was to call my friends in the Ghanaian Muslim community in New York to express my concerns. Mixed with the grief and horror we all feel, I was thinking about the potential for a backlash against all Muslims. This community was, like everyone else, appalled by the attacks, but most of the people to whom I spoke were not particularly worried about this issue. Why? Because they "passed," so to speak, as American blacks and didn't fit into the common stereotype about what a Muslim terrorist might look like. In the following days, there were frightening reports of ethnic stereotyping, but also a concerted effort by most people to deal with the issue of scapegoating.

Islam has spread throughout the world since the seventh century AD to include about a fifth of the people on Earth today. These people share many beliefs, but they do not represent one culture, race, or nationality. Islam's attraction has been that it is most often a religion that promotes equality and welcomes diversity. Muslim communities have long coexisted with other communities, and Muslims intermarry, trade, and work with people of other faiths. It is vital to recognize that the lethal agenda underlying the events of September 11^th is not that of all Muslims by any means.

Educators now have real opportunities to reach out to people of different faiths and backgrounds, break down the barrier between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds, and teach about the diversity that we profess to cherish.

I am a paleoanthropologist with a special interest in how novelties arise in evolution, and in the process by which we became human. This concern reflects in turn on what we are as human beings. I have long ago concluded, for many reasons, that Homo sapiens cannot be the outcome of a process of fine-tuning and improvement over the eons by natural selection.

Indeed, if this were so, the recent atrocities inflicted on our humane and beloved City of New York could never have come about. There is no way that members of a perfected species could ever have even contemplated such an act. Rather, consideration of the archaeological record, the archive of our behavioral evolution, demonstrates that the uniquely creative (and destructive) human capacity was acquired in a relatively short-term event, probably well under 100,000 years ago. Significantly, it almost certainly came about as the result of a chance coincidence of acquisitions. The ethereal cave-wall art of Chauvet and Lascaux is overpowering evidence of a new creative capacity; but even these remarkable people must have had their darker side, too. After all, they drove the Neanderthals to extinction. Homo sapiens today, and presumably then, is and was a bundle of paradoxes, and can be accurately described by any pair of antitheses you care to mention. We can in principle become anything we choose, or are permitted to be; and if our species is to survive, we must find a way to live with ourselves as the complex beings that we are. This places education and the fostering of social awareness in positions of critical significance if we are ever to prevent the baser instincts of our species from tragically erupting to the surface.

As an archaeologist and anthropologist I have had the privilege of living and working in several cultures, and seeing them from the inside. It gives a perspective of both the enormous (and wonderful) differences of human groups and the universal humanity that we share. While specific customs differ widely, basic needs do not. When we communicate with people from different cultures, we almost always share common concerns, interests, and affections.

What we saw on September 11^th was an extreme example of people at the edge of both their own culture and of humanity itself. People who are willing to take their own lives to hurt other people are very rare. They represent an extreme, even pathological, group that has drifted very far from the common values and customs of greater Islamic culture. In trying to understand why this particular example of extreme behavior arose, we need to look at the broad contexts of human interactions and conflicts through history. Those of us who have lived in other cultures have been made aware in very personal ways that America is not universally admired, and indeed we have seen its imperfections ourselves, including some extreme behavior. The objective is to see both our culture and that of others from various perspectives; to respect the basic humanity, which fortunately is almost always present; to try to reduce inter-cultural fear and hate; and to work towards mutual understanding. If humanity is to endure, we must emphasize the human capacity and need to share and collaborate—and reduce the all-too-prominent capacity for hate and conflict.

I was raised in an Islamic household in Ghana, and got my B.A. in Saudi Arabia in Islamic and Arabic language studies. It's similar to an anthropology degree because we studied Arab cultures, and it taught me the importance of understanding the politics, religions, and histories of other cultures. Like my father and grandfather and great-grandfather, I also completed the study of the entire Holy Qur'an, and obtained a special degree as an Islamic scholar, or Imam. As an Imam here in New York, I teach the religion of Islam, mostly to immigrants. Islam teaches Muslims to live peacefully and coexist with others. The Holy Qur'an states: "There is no compulsion in religion..." (Q 2:256).

I was struck by the shock and fear and sympathy for the victims and their loved ones expressed by people from Pakistan, Ghana, Nigeria, and many other places in reaction to the events of September 11^th. Even though we don't often realize it, we are all one. We need to get over our separateness, because whether we like it or not, this has proven to the world that we are one family. While the culture we share at this moment may be one of fear and insecurity, we need to hold on to the sense of shared identity and turn it into something more positive. We must try to eradicate as many of the causes of war as we can, and stand for justice and peaceful coexistence among all the citizens of the world.