Students of ultra-traditional Sunni Islam bid their visitors goodbye by quietly lining the staircase of their Deoband madrassa. (Erik Wander)

This is it.

We're in a classroom in the infamous town of Deoband, 100 miles north of New Delhi. This is, according to some, the point of origin of the radical form of Sunni Islam whose sphere of influence ranges from the Wahabists of Saudi Arabia to the ousted Taliban regime of Afghanistan.

We have been anticipating this day since we first learned it was on our schedule, way back in January, when we were in America, a lifetime ago.

Before us is a sea of faces. They belong to bearded young men in white outfits wearing white knitted skull caps. We entered the room and there they were. It's hot. We're on display. No one prepared us for this. We sit quietly.

A young man stands. He's in the front row. He's speaking in Urdu. There is fire in his voice. What could he be saying?

Farooq Quasim, a senior lecturer at the school, translates. He is bespectacled, around 50 years old. He utters his halting, careful English through the microphone.

"He is wanting to know why it is in the West that Muslims are humiliated," he says.

There is a pause. The eyes are upon our tiny group.

No one speaks. The ceiling fans whirl.

"Go ahead."

It's Sree, our indefatigable leader, whispering to me. I'm no spokesperson, but it is my assigned day to report. More importantly, I suppose, I happen to be sitting closest to him.

So I stand. And I can't help thinking, as the microphone is turned toward my mouth, and the heads tilt back and all those eyes wait patiently, that a man who has been known to screw up jokes, wedding toasts, and restroom directions is perhaps not the ideal choice representing his nation in a Q&A.

But then the words start coming out…

*

The building is a part of Darul Uloom Wakf, a madrassa, or Islamic school. Its students are as young as 14-years-old and appear to be as old as 30. Its curriculum is a part of the "Deobondi tradition."

This combination of theology and politics was forged in the middle and late 19th century in opposition to both British colonial rule and a perceived laxness in the prevailing interpretations of Islam.

But in the late 20th the literalist interpretations of Islam coming from this part of the world have become known for something else. In the West, fairly or unfairly, fundamentalist Islam of this sort has become associated with a violent antagonism toward American influence in the Middle East, restrictions against women, and, of course, the attacks of September 11, 2001.

You won't find much in the way of positive comment about madrassas in many quarters of American and Indian political thought. Indian BJP leader L.K. Advani, speaking to us several days prior, said madrassas fail their students because they don't give them the requisite skills for getting employment in the Indian civil service.

Some Americans have argued that these schools are breeding grounds for terrorism.

The students and instructors we interviewed at Darul Uloom Wakf denied these claims, often with great passion.

So it was a bit jarring to later hear a student ask a question with a sincerity so total it bordered on the benign: "My learned teacher says the media in the West is under the total Jewish control. What will you tell them about us when you return to them?"

*

In front of the microphone, I can only come up with a short answer about why Muslims are humiliated in America. It doesn't really answer his question, but if an American is given an opportunity to offer some words at a moment like this, I'd like to think one could come up with worse ones than these:

"I think in any country, and in any religion, there are extremists. It's that extremism that most of us oppose. So when people from America mistreat anyone based on their religion, it wounds us all."

It's a far cry from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream," or Lou Gehrig's farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, but on hot day in a tense situation, perhaps it was something we could, for a moment, agree on.

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