From The Orange County Register
May 17th, 2005

Father of slain journalist promotes tolerance
Judea Pearl and Akbar Ahmed present a dialogue between the Judaic and the Islamic to students at UC Irvine.
By Jennifer Muir

IRVINE – Judea Pearl exacted his own self-styled "revenge" Monday for the beheading death of his son. In front of a crowd of 400 - white-haired scholars, women wearing head scarves, students in jeans - Pearl discussed his Jewish faith with Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed. The goal: Kill the hate that killed his son, Daniel, in 2002, when terrorists kidnapped and murdered the Wall Street Journal reporter as he researched a story on Islamic extremists.

"Your very presence here is an act of defense against the exclusion and divisiveness that took Danny's life," Pearl told the crowd at the University of California, Irvine. Then he looked up at a projection of the dark-haired, dimpled reporter. "This is your victory, Danny," Pearl said. "A victory of every human freedom forever struggling for the noble, forever daring for the impossible." Monday's appearance was the latest stop on a tour that was born out of the son's tragedy. Judea Pearl, a professor of computer science and statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, and Ahmed, a former diplomat and U.S.-based scholar of contemporary Islam, have appeared across the globe hoping to encourage peaceful, meaningful discussion.

They describe themselves as grandfathers talking about the world they'll leave to their grandchildren, not representatives of any faith or political sect. And they discussed everything from current events to the building blocks of their religions. The men began Monday by discussing a recent Newsweek report that U.S. soldiers allegedly desecrated the Quran, news that incited riots that left at least 15 dead. "The response of the Islamic people is not political," Ahmed said. "This is a very serious act that inflames passions ... The word of God is more important than human life itself. "What worries me, Judea, is that this feeds straight into the sense of the clash." Pearl wondered if the angry response fuels the divide between the cultures. "This need to inflame and amplify negativeness is part of a process and needs to be curtailed," Pearl said.

The friends joked with each other even during the most serious discussions, such as when Pearl asked Ahmed whether most Islamic people feel that theirs is "a superior religion, one to be imposed on others." Ahmed responded: "There's a philosophy of tolerance and that God has sent messengers to people everywhere. In that sense, how I interpret it, Islam has the flexibility to adapt and has shown great periods of acceptance of other societies and great creativity."

Ahmed said people can cite scripture from any religion that pits people against each other, but that they have a responsibility to think of the future when teaching these lessons to their grandchildren. "I would hope we bring out what brings us together," he said. The talk confirmed a message student Ayala Munawar, 20, already has been advocating on campus. "Yeah, there are differences," she said, "but it's not that difficult for us to sit down and have a discussion."