The 9/11 attacks and its aftermath, including wars and insurgencies in
Afghanistan and Iraq, violations in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, Quran
desecrations, beheadings, military offensives, and suicide bombings, has lead some to declare that we are witnessing "A Clash of Civilizations" between the world's great superpower and a faith of a billion followers. While a bold U.S. administration has declared an extensive international war on terror, Islamic resistance organizations have shown no signs of wearing thin. While ignorance and misunderstandings about Islam run rampant in America, Muslim societies across the globe are harboring more and more anti-American sentiment, to the point that Bin Laden enjoys more
popularity than Bush in many Muslim countries.
Lawrence Pintak, director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at
The American University in Cairo, will address this clash of perceptions and
explain how immediate sympathy for the U.S. in the Muslim World right after
9/11 translated into today's tragic, dangerous rift. As a journalism
veteran of 30 years, Pintak has contributed to many of the world's leading
news organizations (including CBS News, ABC News, and the San Francisco
Chronicle) reporting from four different continents and has written and
lectured extensively on America's relationship with the Muslim world,
including covering the birth of modern Islamic terrorism as CBS NEWS Middle
East correspondent in the 1980s. He was nominated twice for the Emmys, is a winner of two Overseas Press Club awards for his Middle East coverage, and
is the author of "Seeds of Hate: How America's Middle East Policy Ignited
the Jihad" and the recently released "Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens:
America, Islam, & the War of Ideas".