OCT 18 — I AM fortunate to have visited Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and other former Ottoman lands in recent years. And a decade ago, I went from the ancient university town of Fez and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into Cordoba, whose Mezquita fascinated me.

Muslim and Christian symbols inhabited the same space, a phenomenon I would see again in the Hagia Sophia, and I realised that one’s worldview can change through travel, as Ibn Battuta and Zheng Ho acknowledged. Many Malaysian Muslims might benefit from following in our co-believers’ footsteps.

My most memorable experience was looking upon the Kaaba in Mecca with my own eyes for the first time when I performed the umrah (minor pilgrimage) as a teenager.

Being so close to the focal point of the worldwide Muslim community, standing not in parallel rows but in concentric circles to face the kiblat was unforgettable, and two million people had this experience earlier this week when they celebrated Aidiladha in the holy city.

I missed Aidiladha in Seri Menanti this year because I am still in the US, where one of the themes of my continuing fellowship is to investigate the American experience of Islam.

Back in June, I was in Australia on an exchange programme with a similar objective, where I marvelled at the genius of Gallipoli Mosque outside Sydney, a gorgeous Ottoman specimen named after Australia’s most defining historical wartime moment, even though the first Muslims in Australia were Malays.

This was rather different to what I had seen in Britain, where the arrival of Islam is innately linked to Muslim immigration from the Asian subcontinent and subsequent debates about multiculturalism, spawning terms like the “cricket test” and chicken tikka masala — even though there were white British converts who predated that phenomenon (like Lady Evelyn Cobbold, cousin-in-law of Cobbold of the Commission, who performed the haj in 1933).

Thus the term “Islam and the West” (if one must use it at all) encompasses a huge diversity of experiences; the American one is also unique.

George Washington had two slaves called “Fatimer” (i.e. Fatimah), and Thomas Jefferson bought a Quran in 1765, which the first elected Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison from Minnesota used at his ceremonial swearing-in ceremony in 2007.

In between those two dates, quite a lot had happened. US relations with the Ottomans and later entanglements in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran — apart from 9/11 — the War on Terror and involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

I look forward to getting a clearer picture as my travels continue. But, amongst those I have already met are Georgetown University’s Professor John Esposito (who has been visiting Malaysia for decades), the Minaret of Freedom’s Dr Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad and the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center’s Imam Suhaib Webb who Malaysians can watch on TV AlHijrah. And though I had met Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in Kuala Lumpur last Ramadan. I wanted to visit his Cordoba Initiative (in an “Interchurch Center” for which president Dwight Eisenhower laid the cornerstone) in New York. Interestingly, while some of the people I’ve met are seen as having either pro-government or pro-opposition sympathies within Malaysia, I found that they made similar assessments about recent developments.

A positive theme that recurred in conversations was the status of women in Malaysia, so far uniformly praised as an inspiration for other Muslim countries: a pertinent observation coinciding with the recent marking of International Day of the Girl and the continuing excitement surrounding Malala Yousafzai who has made a remarkable recovery after being shot by the Taliban.

Every time I read an interview of her, my admiration increases. Her approach to everything is at once compassionate but confident. Some were annoyed that she did not win the Nobel Peace Prize, but at least the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was a worthy winner, unlike Barack Obama and the European Union.

Malala said she wants to become prime minister of Pakistan. Wanting to become prime minister or president of their country is a phase for many teens. But then, most see how disgusting the real world of politics is — requiring such sheer sacrifice, compromise, the temptation of corruption, backstabbing and possibly disastrous falls from grace—and then decide to do something else.

Malala is not an ordinary teen though. And if, at the age of sixteen in the face of death threats she is able to exhibit such courageous tolerance with statements from her father like “Education is neither Eastern nor Western, education is education and it is the right of every human being”, then on one level she is already superior to many prime ministers.

I hope one day her native Swat Valley will once again be on the travel hotlist.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.