What are examples of the peace tradition within Islam?
PATEL: I’ll give you two recent examples that people don’t know—even Muslims don’t know. In the Rwandan genocide, three-quarters of a million people were killed in 100 days. Probably the only organized group of people who intervened was Muslims. I learned this when I spoke at the Centennial of the American Jewish Committee in Washington, D.C., a couple years ago. A young Rwandan woman said to me, “Why are you here?” I said, “I’m a Muslim, and I think they want to talk about interfaith engagements, so I’m doing that.” She started to tear up and said, “My family is alive because of your people.” Muslims went into Rwanda because they felt compelled by their faith. They put their lives on the line to protect the weakest. The second thing is that the South African liberation movement had a huge contingent of Muslims involved. In fact, some of the most important scholars in the world today were at the forefront of that movement: Ebrahim Moosa, Ebrahim Rasool, Rashid Omar, Farid Esack. They
