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FOREIGN POLICY: In your article, you mention how disillusioned you became after going to work for the UN’s Alliance of Civilizations project. What were your expectations when you were hired for that project?

Geneive Abdo: It wasn’t so much that I was disappointed initially. It was how the project evolved, which I think is just one small example of a greater trend that has developed much more so since the alliance was formed in 2005. People are dancing around what are the more serious issues regarding the differences between Islamic and Western societies…. Even though I use the UN as an example in the piece, I don’t mean to place such a great emphasis on this project because it’s just part of a big picture that includes this whole sort of movement toward interfaith dialogue. I was just in Egypt last week and I met and interviewed some sheikhs at the seat for Sunni learning in the Islamic world—a huge mosque and university complex that is more than a thousand years old—and I asked them about some of these issues and how they view the so-called divide in a political and religious sense, and they made the same point. They think that most Islamic societies are extremely anti-American and that now is the time to address what the problems are and not cover them over. So the reason I wrote the piece is to try to present what I think is a more realistic view from the Islamic world rather than how these issues are viewed in the West.

FP: Was that perspective from the Egyptian sheiks you spoke with characteristic of the other people you met when you were doing your work for the UN? What did they tell you?

GA: When I worked for the Alliance, we didn’t really seek the opinion of people in the Islamic world. As I said in the piece, that was part of the original mission, but it never materialized. But in the general sense, that’s the problem, which is that you have … Muslims who are supposedly representing [all Muslims], but they are Westernized and are not really the people that Western governments—particularly the United States—should be engaging. The U.S. government should be engaging Muslims across the Arab world and across the Islamic world who have grievances. They shouldn’t be speaking to the choir. That’s the whole point of foreign-policy approaches, or should be. So, I do think that the people that I met this week in Egypt, their views definitely reflect what is the mainstream. That’s why I wrote the article, because the U.S. government is engaging the wrong Muslims.

FP: This does get to a larger point in current U.S. foreign-policy debates. Couldn’t you argue that talking to a few extremists or people on the fringes legitimizes their point of view, perhaps even alienating the larger majority of moderates who would probably also appreciate an audience with high-ranking officials and prominent journalists?

GA: Well, I think that sitting down to negotiate with al Qaeda is probably not very effective. But the Muslims I’m talking about that should be the focus of any sort of foreign-policy strategy aren’t necessarily the “extremists.” We have to define who is an extremist. I think that’s necessary. I know that, for example, there have been some talks between the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt and U.S. congresspeople recently—about a year ago, there was a meeting in Cairo—and I think that those kinds of meetings are very constructive. And I think that whether or not the United States should be talking to Hamas and Hezbollah, I think that their argument goes different ways, but we have to consider realpolitik: These movements … can no longer be dismissed. There needs to be a new strategy with the next administration. How they talk to these groups or how they talk to what I consider to be groups that reflect much more mainstream opinions, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

FP: Do you think that any of the interfaith groups are doing something right?

GA: I think that the more sincere ones aren’t using this in an opportunistic way. There are some small Muslim organizations, for example, that have been in touch with churches, and church groups that have given Korans to their parishioners—I think that things that are being done on a more interpersonal level [is] helpful, but I think that what’s important is that they’re relating to each other on a much more human level. Where I think things get a bit disingenuous is when you have these large or high-level interfaith campaigns that have a subtext that [promise] to solve the political problem. There are a few well-funded imams in America, for example, who say they are engaging in interfaith dialogue—but when they give public lectures, they talk about how all the Christians and Muslims and Jews need to do is get together to solve the Palestine-Israeli conflict. That’s just idiotic. The interfaith movement, as it’s developed on a big scale, is on the wrong track and is deceptive. But what people are doing on a much smaller scale as individuals, churches, and mosques can be helpful because they’re not trying to pretend that it’s anything but a conversation of people getting together.