Islamic Scholars Need U.S.

The Iraq war may be unforgiveable, but America has given Islam a priceless gift: a haven for Muslim scholarship, says a professor at the University of Deleware. "Muslim scholars have always maintained that true happiness comes from the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge," writes M. A. Muqtedar Khan. "I found this to be the case in America."

Khan ticks off a list of US-based thinkers whose work is the "gold standard" in Islamic scholarship. "Today, one can talk about an American tradition in Islamic thinking," he writes. "The United States, not any of the 55 nations in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, is the No. 1 choice of Muslims for permanent relocation." (More Iraq stories.)