Yvonne Ridley

Last week we hosted a speaker at CMU-Q named Yvonne Ridley. This woman used to be a British journalist, she was captured by the Taleban in Afghanistan in late September, 2001. She negotiated her own release 10 days later, and agreed to read the Koran when she returned to Britian. She then converted to Islam and became quite an outspoken advocate of her new religion, especially the role of women. Her basic point was that Muslims need to stand up for themselves and educate the world about the real religion of Islam, not the extreme version that is practiced by fundamentalists, terrorists, etc. What exactly she said was interesting, but more interesting was the reactions that students and faculty had to her.

The faculty and staff, most of whom are from the West, had reactions ranging from "She's an extremist nutcase" to "She made some interesting points, but at times I thought she went a little too far." (That second one was mine)

The student reactions, however, ranged from "I didn't agree with everything, but she was thought-provoking" to "She truly inspired me."

The disappointing thing was that the faculty and staff were surprised when they heard that the students responded well to Ms. Ridley. They assumed that everyone would have responded the way they did. There just seems to be a cultural disconnect there, and Java programming and calculus might be the same around the world, but if the dialogue about culture doesn't exist, I just wonder how the faculty is truly going to reach the students. Maybe that's a very anthropological viewpoint of mine, but I hope that the staff and faculty here understand that they have a lot they can learn from these students as well as a lot to teach them.