On the 25th anniversary of September 11th, Professor Iqbal Akhtar (FIU) hosts Ismail Royer — Director of the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team at the Religious Freedom Institute and a member of the President's Religious Liberty Commission — for an unusually candid reflection on the American Muslim community's response to 9/11, then and now. Royer traces his own path: converting to Islam in 1992, volunteering with Bosnian refugees, fighting in Bosnia during the war, and later helping build CAIR's civil rights department from the ground up. He argues that American Muslim advocacy adopted a "grievance model" — demand, condemn, reject — without first building the local relationships and institutional trust that could have absorbed the shock of 9/11. Twenty-five years later, he says, public opinion of Muslims is worse than it was in the immediate aftermath, and the underlying pattern hasn't changed. The conversation closes with audience Q&A on ethnic diversity within the Muslim American community, interfaith institution-building, and why Muslim charitable giving so rarely funds domestic, common-good institutions.
Speaker: Ismail Royer, Religious Freedom Institute
Host: Dr. Iqbal Akhtar, Florida International University
#September11 #AmericanMuslims #InterfaithDialogue #ReligiousFreedom #CovenantalPluralism #IslamInAmerica
Ismail RoyerGuest
Iqbal AkhtarHost
