History of the MLT Program

Media Engagement
Other Activities

Conferences

New York, 2004

In 2004, ASMA Society convened over 125 young, American-born Muslims – all leaders in their diverse fields – at the RBF Garrison institute in upstate New York for the first Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow conference. The forum, entitled “Muslim Leadership in America: The Next Generation’s Role and Responsibilities,” facilitated seminal conversations about improving the image of Islam in the United States and the unique Muslim-American identity that inaugurated the MLT program as a pioneer in solutions to some of the greatest challenges facing Muslims today.

Discussions tackled issues as significant as the Muslim-West divide, the role of media in reinforcing stereotypes, the need for greater Muslim civic engagement, the need to better safeguard civil rights, the use of culture and the arts in building bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims, the current global leadership vacuum, and the need for greater pluralism and tolerance within the Muslim community.

Copenhagen, 2006

Building upon the excitement generated by the 2004 forum, the first pan-Western MLT conference was held in 2006 in Copenhagen, Denmark with an expanded group of Muslim leaders from both North America and Europe. Assembling on the anniversary of the 2005 London Bombings, the MLTs stressed the need for Muslims in the West to set their own agenda by defining and offering solutions to the problems that face them collectively. The conference, entitled “Muslim Integration in the West,” reinforced the cohesiveness of the MLT network with the shared values of tolerance, pluralism and a more peaceful world.

Copenhagen’s significance as the capital of the country at the center of the 2004 Prophet Muhammad controversy was a central feature of the conference. The more than 200 MLTs present participated in a session entitled “Freedom of Expression,” which featured Flemming Rose, the Danish editor of Jyllands-Posten who commissioned the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The dialogue examined how respect for the sacred and freedom of speech can become competing values.

Other conversations, such as the sensational discussion of theology that took place in a session features six imams, addressed further challenges faced by Muslims in the contemporary West, including media bias, dogmatism, values conflicts between traditional Islam and secularism and the place of women in religious authority.

A cartoon unveiled by American cartoonist Saleh Memecan at the 2006 MLT Conference in Copenhagen

Media Engagement

Having built a network of talented, diverse leaders through the MLT conferences, ASMA Society and Cordoba Initiative have begun to tap their ability to speak eloquently on behalf of a progressive, tolerant Islam as a way of countering the negative portrayal of Muslims in Western media.

Following the London bombings of 2005, many in the American public feared that young Muslims would perpetrate similar acts of terror in the U.S. Taking action, a group of MLTs immediately contacted CNN and helped create a TV program addressing the anxieties of young Muslim men in the United States. Furthering the values that were affirmed at the 2004 conference, the MLTs succeeded in defining the issues facing their community and expressing these concerns to the larger public.

Since the 2006 conference, MLTs have appeared often in major news outlets as eloquent spokespeople for the proactive change envisioned by the MLT program. After the release of the 2007 Pew Research Center poll indicating that younger Muslims in the U.S. hold that suicide bombing can sometimes be justified in defense of Islam, ASMA trained three MLTs to respond in a segment that aired on CNN’s American Morning. In September of the same year, MLTs also appeared in CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. Then, as CNN’s Christiane Amanpour was reporting on youth extremism in the United Kingdom, she profiled the work of a British MLT imam who works with British Muslim youth to provide alternative channels of empowerment.

MLTs have also been well represented in print media. In 2007, Newsweek magazine published a feature story on the practice of veiling within Western countries. Taking action once more, MLTs connected Newsweek with one of the program’s members, a British journalist who wears the veil. Not only did the magazine decide to let this young leader write the article from her perspective, but they also made it the cover story of the issue, raising the visibility of her balanced comments in the face of growing suspicion.

Other Activities

In addition to their growing media visibility, MLTs have participated in a growing number of public forums as members of the MLT program. Only three months after the MLT conference in Copenhagen, a group of articulate MLT members from the US and Europe were invited to present strategies for building bridges between the Muslim world and the West at the World Economic Forum.

In the 8 months after the Copenhagen conference, MLTs were invited to several conferences to share their views and solutions across Europe, including The Hague, Belgium and the United Kingdom. A subsequent conference in Germany, titled Muslims as Citizens, was organized by a German MLT who was inspired by the Copenhagen discussions. Beginning in 2008, MLTs have also taken part in a series of interfaith dialogues with ACCESS, a Jewish leadership network under the auspices of the American Jewish Committees. The MLT program aims to continue to form productive interfaith partnerships such as these to maximize the impact of MLTs in building bridges. In addition to Jewish-Muslim outreach, the MLT program opes to inaugurate interfaith initiatives across Hindu-Muslim and Christian-Muslim boundaries within the coming year.