    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [January 10, 2000]
    [Pages 18-20]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Celebration Commemorating the End of Ramadan
    January 10, 2000

        Thank you very much. Eid Mubarak, and welcome to the White House.
    Naimah Saleem, you did a fine job for a 14-
    year-old--or a 24-year-old or a 44-year-old. I thought she was terrific.
    Thank you very much; thank you. And Imam Hendi,
    thank you so much for your words, your prayer, and for serving as the
    first Muslim chaplain of my alma mater, Georgetown University.
    Congratulations. We're glad to have you here. Thank you, sir.
        I'd like to welcome others from the administration who've joined us:
    our National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger; Assistant Secretary of State Harold Koh. We also have a White House Fellow here, Khalid Azim; and Dr. Islam Siddiqui, the
    senior adviser to the Secretary of Agriculture and the highest ranking
    Muslim in the Clinton administration. We thank him for being here. We
    have a Muslim Army chaplain, Captain Muhammad. We thank him for being here, and the other Muslims
    who work here in the White House--they are all particularly welcome--and
    all the rest of you who have come here. Let me say welcome to you.
    [Applause]
        My friend Rasheed, thank you for
    leading the applause there. I always try to have someone in the audience
    there who is pumping the crowd at the right time. [Laughter]
        Let me also say a special word of welcome to you from the First
    Lady. Hillary has done this
    celebration for the past several years; many of you have been here with
    her. And she had to be out of the city today, and that's the only reason
    she's not here, because this means so very much to her. And I want to
    welcome you here on her behalf, as well.
        Over the weekend, along with Muslims all over the world, you
    celebrated the end of the holy month of Ramadan. The month of daily
    fasting is not only a sacred duty; it is also a powerful teaching, and
    in many ways a gift of

    [[Page 19]]

    Islam to the entire rest of the world, reminding not simply Muslims but
    all people of our shared obligation to aid those who live with poverty
    and suffering. It reminds us that we must work together to build a more
    humane world.
        I must say, it was, I thought, especially fitting that we celebrated
    the Eid at the end of the first round of talks between the Syrians and
    the Israelis. And I thought it was particularly moving that Imam read the passage from the Koran that said that Allah
    created nations and tribes that we might know one another, not that we
    might despise one another.
        There's a wonderful passage in the Hebrew Torah which warns people
    never to turn aside the stranger, for it is like turning aside the most
    high God. And the Christian Bible says that people should love their
    neighbor as themselves. But it's quite wonderful to say that Allah
    created the nations and tribes that they might know one another better,
    recognizing people have to organize their thoughts and categorize their
    ideas, but that does not mean we should be divided one from another.
        It has been a great blessing for me, being involved in these talks
    these last few days, to see the impact of the month of Ramadan and the
    Eid on the believers in the Syrian delegation who are here. It was quite
    a moving thing. And I hope that your prayers will stay with them.
        Let me say, also, that there is much that the world can learn from
    Islam. It is now practiced by one of every four people on Earth.
    Americans are learning more in our schools and universities. Indeed, I
    remember that our daughter took a course on
    Islamic history in high school and read large portions of the Koran, and
    came home at night and educated her parents about it and later asked us
    questions about it. And of course, there are now 6 million Muslims in
    our Nation today. The number of mosques and Islamic centers, now at
    1,200, continues to grow very rapidly.
        Today, Muslim Americans are a cornerstone of our American community.
    They enrich our political and cultural life; they provide leadership in
    every field of human endeavor, from business to medicine to scholarship.
    And I think it is important that the American people are beginning to
    learn that Muslims trace their roots to all parts of the globe, not just
    to the Middle East but also to Africa and to Asia and to the Balkans and
    other parts of Europe. You share with all Americans common aspirations
    for a better future, for greater opportunities for children, for the
    importance of work and family and freedom to worship.
        But like other groups past and present in America, Muslim Americans
    also have faced from time to time--and continue to face, sadly, from
    time to time--discrimination, intolerance, and, on occasion, even
    violence. There are still too many Americans who know too little about
    Islam. Too often, stereotypes fill the vacuum ignorance creates. That
    kind of bigotry is wrong, has no place in American society. There is no
    place for intolerance against people of any faith--against Muslims or
    Jews or Christians or Buddhists or Baha'i or any other religious group--
    or ethnic or racial group.
        If America wishes to be a force for peace and reconciliation across
    religious and ethnic divides from the Middle East to Northern Ireland to
    the Balkans to Africa to Asia--if that is what we wish--if we wish to do
    good around the world, we must first be good here at home on these
    issues.
        I ask all of you to help with that, to share the wellsprings of your
    faith with those who are different, to help people understand the values
    and the humanity that we share in common and the texture and fabric and
    fiber and core of the beliefs and practices of Islam.
        Children do not come into the world hating people of different
    tribes and faiths. That is something they learn to do. They either are
    explicitly taught to do it, or they learn to do it by following the
    example of others, or they learn to do it in reaction to oppression that
    they, themselves, experience. And those of us who are adults have a
    responsibility to change those childhoods, to give this generation of
    children around the world a different future than so many have played
    out tragically in the last few years.
        I think it is quite ironic that at the end of the cold war, when a
    system of atheistic, controlling communism has failed and been rejected,
    our latest demon seems to be the old-fashioned one of people fighting
    each other because they are of different religious faiths or racial or
    ethnic heritages. We know that is not at the core of any religious
    teaching. We know it is not at the core of Islam.
        So I ask you again to rededicate yourselves in this coming year to
    making sure that others in this country truly understand and appreciate
    the faith you embrace, its practices, its beliefs,

    [[Page 20]]

    its precepts, and its inclusive humanity. [Applause] Thank you.
        The Koran also teaches, in addition to the fact that we should do
    unto others as we wish to have done to us and reject for others what we
    would reject for ourselves, that we should also make a commitment to
    live in peace. There is a new Moon that has risen at the end of Ramadan
    and a new millennium marked in many nations. And again, I say to you as
    we leave, in addition to your prayers and work for peace and
    understanding and reconciliation within the United States, I ask
    especially for your prayers for the current mission of peace in the
    Middle East.
        We are on a track in which the Israelis, the Syrians, I hope soon
    the Lebanese, and already the Palestinians have committed themselves to
    work through these very difficult, longstanding issues over the course
    of the next 2 months--the longstanding commitment between the
    Palestinians and the Israelis to resolve their business by next month.
    So this will be a time of great tension, where all people will have to
    search for wisdom and understanding, where there will be great
    reluctance to open the closed fist and walk out into a new era.
        And I think that the prayers of Muslims, Jews, Christians, and
    people of good will all over the world will be needed for us to get
    through these next several weeks. But for you, I hope it is an immense
    source of pride that you live in a country that is trying to make peace
    in the land where your faith was born.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:30 a.m. in Presidential Hall in the
    Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building. In his remarks, he
    referred to Naimah Saleem, who introduced the President; Yahya Hendi,
    chaplain, Georgetown University; and Capt. Rasheed Abdul-Muhammad,
    chaplain, USA.