George Dardess

First, a couple of bare facts:

• I'm a Roman Catholic Deacon, serving the Rochester, NY, diocese as a consultant on immigration and interfaith affairs.

• Most of my publications have been on Christian Muslim dialogue. (I talk about that passion below.) But I also write/draw graphic novels. One of them, "Foreign Exchange," is listed here. Contact me at gdardess@gmail.com if you'd like to buy a brand-new copy. I've just finished a graphic novel about White Privilege, entitled "George."

How I Got Involved in Christian-Muslim Dialogue

It all started back in Fall 1993 when after much delay and footdragging, the result of inertia and fear, I approached the front door of Rochester, NY’s, Islamic Center to take Beginning Arabic.

I’d made a promise to myself two years earlier while watching the TV images of the US’s bombing of Baghdad during “Desert Storm” (the first Iraq War) to learn Arabic. This would be the way, I thought, to answer the complicity I felt in that war. I felt complicitous because, despite my privileged education, I knew nothing of Iraq, Islam, the Qur’an, and Middle Eastern history (including the West’s violent interventions in it). I was in my fifities and despite much travel I had never met a Muslim. It was because of the profound ignorance of people like myself that this horrendous war in the Gulf was being prosecuted with such impunity on the part of my government. Learning Arabic was a small gesture of restitution, laughable, perhaps, but it was what I thought was at least in my power to do.

But I put off going forward on my promise to myself for nearly two years. Finally, though, I was in front of the Islamic Center’s front door. Should I enter? Even in 1993 the fumes of Islamophobia had reached our shores. I was terrified by what might happen if I did. Shame overcame cowardice, however. Having reached the front door, I could not turn back. I knocked. The door opened. I was cut to pieces by heathen madmen…

No: I was welcomed warmly, asked gently to remove my shoes and come upstairs where the class was to be held…

I tell different elements of what happened next in all the books on Muslim-Christian listed on this Author’s Page, and in other places as well. The books express my gratitude for what I began to learn in that class in Beginning Arabic, and what I have learned since, and continue to learn, thanks to the richly fulfilling relationships with Muslims I have known in the years since.