Former U.S. diplomat interprets Islam Newly settled in Montana, Dave
Grimland tries to balance negative images of the Muslim world.
By Sam Howe Verhovek, Times Staff Writer
April 1, 2007
PLENTYWOOD, MONT. — Dave Grimland spent nearly 30 years as a foreign service
officer — "telling the U.S. side of the story," he says — in Bangladesh,
India, Cyprus, Turkey and other nations with large Muslim populations. He
wrote ambassadors' speeches, arranged cultural gatherings, and more than
once hunkered down as angry mobs gathered outside the embassy to protest
American policy.
Now retired and living in rural Montana, Grimland is once again telling a
side of the story — only this time, in quiet pockets of the Big Sky State,
he's trying to tell the Muslim side to non-Muslim Americans.
"I'm going to ask you, at least for this evening, to try to put on a pair of
Muslim glasses and see what the world looks like," Grimland said one recent
night to about 40 ranchers, farmers and others in the basement of the county
library near the spot where Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan meet.
Outside, it was snowing and 16 degrees. The nearest mosque was about 120
miles away, in Regina. Many in the audience said they had never met a Muslim
other than Plentywood High School exchange student Alisher Taylonzoda, from
Tajikistan.
For two hours and 40 minutes — including a brief break for cider and baked
goods — the Montanans listened intently as Grimland covered a sweeping
amount of history and made a case that the vast majority of Muslims are like
the great majority of Christians, Jews or Buddhists.
"No worse; no better," he said. "They want peace. They want to live their
lives."
A soft-spoken man of 63, Grimland has traveled to dozens of churches,
schools, small-town gathering halls and Indian reservations.
He brings along a black roller suitcase crammed with books, magazine
articles and photocopies of slightly blurry maps, timelines, and "further
study" reading lists for those interested in the history of Islam.
Talking to a dozen people there, 40 here, as many as 75 elsewhere, Grimland
hardly expects to change the world. But he does feel a calling.
"I'd been frustrated ever since 9/11 by listening to comments [about] the
backwardness of Islam, about the religion's responsibility for the 9/11
tragedy, versus the actions of a small number of Islamic extremists."
And so, Grimland said, "I just thought maybe I could try to help people who
haven't traveled, who haven't had the benefit of having to know this stuff
because it was part of their job."
He didn't come to Montana to give lectures on Islam. He came here to retire.
After the peripatetic life of an embassy public affairs officer, he and his
wife, Kathleen, a former UNICEF officer in India, moved in 1995 to Columbus,
about 35 miles west of Billings. They have a 15-year-old son, Michael;
Grimland also has a daughter, Debra, 36, in Atlanta.
Grimland and his wife built a house on land they bought in 1990, after
friends visiting India from the States showed them photographs of the
Montana property.
After the 2001 terrorist attacks, as he watched television news and took in
what he describes as irregular coverage of the Muslim world in local
newspapers, Grimland felt that Montanans were being given little true sense
of that world.
"Islam, for most of us, didn't really even register on our personal radar
screens until Sept. 11, 2001," he said.
"And since then, we've been assaulted with generally negative, often very
violent images of the religion."
Grimland does not remotely justify terrorism.
He does try to explain what motivates jihadists, and why some Muslims don't
condemn the violence.
"Many Muslims do perceive the U.S. as decadent and degenerate," Grimland
told the gathering here, referring to Janet Jackson's exposed breast in the
2004 Super Bowl halftime show and TV's "Desperate Housewives."
When he filled in as a substitute history teacher at the Columbus high
school, he said, he was shocked at how sexually suggestive some of student
attire was.
Many in the audience here in Plentywood, seated on folding chairs, nodded.
Still, when it came time for questions, many also seemed to express polite
skepticism about the Muslim world's desire for peace.
"These moderates you're talking about — is there ever going to be an outcry
from them, or do they secretly agree with this?" asked Betty Overland, a
local banker. The "this" was the jihadists' violence against Americans.
*Grimland said that there were moderate Muslim voices but that they rarely
got media coverage.*
Bennie Lund, 78, a retired Plentywood elementary school teacher and wheat
farmer who also once ran the local General Motors and Dairy Queen
businesses, said he had a question.
"I was wondering about this plan to send 7,000 Iraqis over here now," said
Lund, referring to a Bush administration plan to provide asylum from
worsening violence in Iraq.
"I'm wondering whether that's a good idea or not a
