Imam Zaid on the Educational Challenge for Our Religious Leaders

The challenge of exemplifying the prophetic virtues, coupled with the challenge of calling humanity to those virtues requires that we rise to the challenge of leadership. Meeting that challenge will require a vastly enhanced base of both religious and worldly knowledge in our communities. Collectively, our entire community, men, women, and youth, has to aspire to heightened levels of educational attainment. As John Kennedy, Malcolm X, and many others have said, "Knowledge is power." We cannot deceive ourselves into thinking that we are in a position to even begin to lead humanity. To meet the challenge of leadership, we must meet the challenge of enhanced education and literacy.

This challenge is especially pressing for our religious leaders. Contributing to the solution to problems related to global development and population growth, medical crises such as AIDS and SARS, bioethical issues such as human stem cell research, cloning, and vivisection, and other contentious religious, philosophical, social, political, cultural, and economic issues will require scholars who are steeped in our intellectual tradition, conversant with contemporary intellectual currents, and capable of judiciously assessing controversial social issues and debates....(34-35) from "Abraham's Story" in Scattered Pictures: Reflections of An American Muslim

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