The 1347th. meeting of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences was held on Wednesday, November 19, 2003 at 5.30 p.m. at the New Haven Lawn Club. Some 70 members and their guests attended the lecture and 60 stayed for cocktails and dinner.

President Ernest Kohorn welcomed the group and invited the Secretary to
announce new members. Margot Kohorn said that eight new members had been elected one of whom was present and welcomed, Birgitte Johnson, Managing Member of Gittan Financial Consultants of Hamden. The others were Deborah Abildsoe, Managing Member, Asset and Retirement Associates (ARIA) Guilford; Jeffrey Andersen, Director, Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme; Frances T. Clark, Consultant in Community Development New Haven; Richard Fearon,M.D. Associate Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine, Yale University; Ann Lehman, Head of Sculpting, Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven; Kathleen McCourt, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, Quinnipiac University and David Rau, Director of Education, Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme.
   Mrs Kohorn said that many members missed the opportunity to talk to their colleagues as well as the presence of sherry or wine before the lecture. She said that she would discuss it with members to ascertain their pleasure. Dr. Kohorn, before introducing the
speaker said that he was making an executive decision and that there would indeed be sherry before the lecture next time. The
proceedings would then start at 5p.m. with the lecture at 5.30. He then introduced the speaker, Gerhard Bowering, Professor of
Religious Studies at Yale University.

The title of Professor Bowering's talk was "The Challenge of Islam". He said that Islam today had forced its way into our public life. There were five blocks creating a wide belt. First there was the Arab block including Turkey and Iran, then South Asia which included India and its sub-continent and numbered 300 million people, South East Asia which included Indonesia and Malaysia and finally Black Africa in which Islam was vying with Christianity for the soul of Africa. There was another group that was a phenomenon rather than a block and that was the diaspora of the West. The explosion of communication and transportation has created the opportunity for dealing with new ideas. Once the Muslims were the lords of the world and the West had sat at their feet. Today the positions are reversed and the Muslim world wonders how that happened.
   Professor Bowering traced the rise of Islam from Mohammed's teaching: he confirmed Moses and Jesus, monotheism and life after death. Man emanated from Adam and God was communicating already then. Mohammed became the final messenger because God gave him the Koran. Word spread rapidly and conversions to Islam grew with spectacular success in the 1st and 2nd centuries. "It always grew where it put its foot." Today Muslims feel that they are sitting in the center of the globe, that they understand the final divine word and that it is perfectly stated. Community life is modeled on Mohamed's life and they restructure the world rather than learn the religion of others. The Prophet had regulated the community and if rules were not carried out then they were imposed. The House of Islam is the "House of War" and Jihad is the struggle by pen and mouth, not necessarily violence to carry the message of the prophet. Muslims believe that creating order based on Islamic law which is immutable and divine, is the salvation for humanity. At the beginning of the 20th century there was an attempt to build a secular muslim state in Turkey. It succeeded to some extent but was not exported. Today there are more and more fundamentalist muslims who are trying to answer the question posed earlier, why are we no longer on top? The fundamentalists believe it is because muslims are no longer true to their beliefs. They must go back to the original
pristine Islam. However Professor Bowering argues that ideal state never existed. Historically there were constant tribal wars. Noone has been able to establish an ideal Islamic state. Militants are emerging among the fundamentalists because they are frustrated and do not know how to achieve the ideal. They just know they have strayed. Currently conformity is nourished, the prayers are the same all over the world, Ramadan is observed and pilgrimages to Mecca are carried out. It is easy to become a muslim: one just has to recite portions of the Koran and to have seen the light. Human rights and tolerance remain major issues in the world of Islam. It is more of a
theocracy than a democracy. Professor Bowering was not optimistic about the future of Islam and the rise of the fundamentalists vis a vis the rest of the world.