Press Availability
Office of the Spokesman
Washington, DC
October 19, 2006Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns and Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes At The Annual State Department Iftaar Dinner

The Benjamin Franklin Room

Excerpt :

“We thank the Muslim community in our country for teaching us about
the great religion of Islam. We still have much to learn. But it is
true that some of the most powerful thinkers in the past century:
Mahatma Gandhi; Martin Luther King Jr.; the Agha Khan; the Dali Lama,
very different people but they shared one critical trait in common.
Their actions were strongly rooted in their own religious beliefs, but
they learned and grew from the teachings of other religions and may it
be so in our own country. It’s learning about each other and standing
up for each other, by being voices of tolerance and understanding,
it’s then that we’ll overcome the challenges of extremism and of those
who seek to distort and exploit religion, any religion, for their own
particular design. We don’t believe the extremists will succeed,
because we know that there is nothing irreconcilable between Islam and
America. We know that as we sit together tonight from our different
backgrounds we share a common faith and that faith is in the future.
And the future must be built on tolerance and on peace.”

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